With Chinelo Nwangene
The recent sex-for-marks scandal that rocked the ObafemiAwolowo University, Ile-Ife in Osun state has drawn attention to the perennial issue of sexual harassment of, mostly, female students by randy lecturers in the nation’s tertiary institutions.
Unending sex scandal:
The news media was awash last week with reports of an ill-fated attempt by a randy lecturer of the ObafemiAwolowo University, Ile Ife, Osun state to sleep with one of his students multiple times in order to upgrade her mark. An audio conversation between the lecturer, suspected to be a professor [and, believe it, an ordained collar-wearing minister of the Anglican Communion] in the accountancy department of the university, and an unidentified female student, has since gone viral on the social media. This has prompted the management of the school to sanction the don for gross misconduct.
The teacher was caught on tape demanding to have sexual intercourse with the female student five times as a gratification to upgrade her score from 33 to enable her pass a course. “Let’s have the first one today and then we will do another one tomorrow … Our agreement is five (times)” the lecturer was overheard telling the student.
The embattled student had rejected the lecturer’s sex-for-marks demand on the grounds that the number of the romp did not commensurate with the pass mark he wanted to give her. “Prof, you know what? Let me fail it. I can’t do it five times; for what nah? No worry. Thank you, Sir”, she declared before hanging up.
Mixed reactions have since trailed the latest sex-for-marks saga with many commentators urging the OAU management to apply severe sanction on the erring lecturer to serve as a deterrent to other lecturers who have formed the habit of sexually harassing female students.
The matter took a dramatic twist when the school authority disclosed that the suspected lecturer may not be punished because the name of the school was not specifically mentioned in the tape and it did not receive official complaints fromthe affected student who refused to pursue the case.
The institution’s Public Relations Officer, AbiodunOlanrewaju, explained the position of the school management: “Let us be clear that, for justice to take place there must be a complainant. For example, a victim has to report to a police station for any injustice before the police can take up the matter. There has to be a complainant before things could be done.”
Mr. Olarenwaju, however, stressed that the school had zero tolerance for sexual harassment, intimidation or coercion under whatever guise. “We frown at anybody whose conduct or utterances might breach the code of conduct of the anti-sexual harassment policy and to this end, any member of the university who goes beyond the laws of the university will be sanctioned,” he declared.
The institution’s vice chancellor, Prof. Eyitope Ogunbodede, also assured that the university would sanction the professor if found culpable. “We have a committee that is investigating the matter now and we gave them one week to submit their report. If we run into any hitch, we can use all the resources available to get to where we are going. But once things are running smoothly, we may not need to involve the police. But we must first identify those involved and where they are; if we have any problem doing that, then that is when the university will invite the police”, he said.
The general expectation remains that the randy lecturer would be expelled by the OAU management to send the signal that it does not tolerate such misconduct. People recall that the Governing Council of the Osun State University, Osogbo, in November 2016, terminated the appointment of Dr. Olabode Ojoniyi of the Department of Languages and Linguistics, Ikire Campus, who was caught on video in a sexual act with a female student identified as Mercy Ikwue.
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Mr. Ojoniyi’s claim that his sexual misconduct, captured in a video secretly recorded by the female student, was actually a blackmail masterminded by one of his colleagues, did not save him from expulsion.
A similar sex scandal that rocked the Ambrose Alli University (AAU), Ekpoma in July 2010, involving a lecturer, Dr. Peter Otubu and a female student, Judith IvieOkosun was eventually dragged before a Magistrate Margaret Iluobe of Ekpoma magistrate court. In the dramatic video that went viral on the internet, Dr. Otubu, a Catholic Knight of Saint Mulumba (KSM), was almost stripped naked in the residence of Judith, a 400-level engineering student on July 17, 2010 while allegedly attempting to have sex with her in exchange for a pass mark in his course.
“I slept with him the first time and he failed me feigning not to have remembered my matriculation number. He unbelievably invited me for sex again promising to pass me this time. I cleverly turned the tables on him by inviting him to my off campus apartment instead of meeting him at a hotel. As soon as he took his clothes off, I ripped them to shreds and got my neighbours to video his humiliation”, she claimed.
Following the humiliation that saw the revered teacher pleading with his traducers to let him off the hook, authorities of AAU slammed an indefinite suspension on the lecturer for allegedly taking undue advantage of the female student. Miss Okosun was also suspended by the institution for six semesters for allegedly violating its matriculation oath.
But Otubu later fought back. Judith was later detained for two days by the police at the State Criminal Investigation Department (SCID) following a petition by the embattled lecturer that he was kidnapped by the female student. When the case was eventually dragged to court, a seven-count charge of alleged ‘stealing, threat to kill, unlawful detention and publication, false statement and assault punishable under the criminal procedure law’ was slammed on Miss Okosun, three lecturers and three students.
When hearing in the criminal case began at the Magistrate Court, the accused persons were said to have conspired amongst themselves to commit felony with intent to steal and demand the sum of N500,000 from Engr. (Dr.) Peter Otubu with threat to kill or lynch him if he failed to comply, which made him to issue a cheque of N100,000 in favour of one Judith IvieOkosun. The accused persons were also alleged to have unlawfully detained Engr. (Dr.) Peter Otubu in the apartment of Judith IvieOkosun against his will, as well as recording and publishing the recorded video clips of the plaintiff (Otubu) on the internet with intent to injure him and exposed him to hatred.
While the fates of the OAU lecturer and the female students were still being awaited, as at press time. Orient Daily investigation reveals that demands for sexual gratifications remain a regular occurrence on campuses across the country. Incidentally, most victims of sexual harassment on campuses often refrain from reporting the incidents because of the fear that the lecturer has the power to retaliate or that the school authority may not follow up the case to ensure that justice is served.
However, some commentators argue that the female student of OAU involved in the latest sex for marks scandal was the first offender, for asking her lecturer to give her additional marks. “All she wants to do is to blackmail her way through; otherwise she should have used the appropriate channels set up by the school to deal with her failure, if she is certain that the lecturer failed her deliberately”, a public affairs analyst, Chijioke Ofor, said.
According to him, both the lecturer and the student are criminals “because she bargained for marks and she was told the price (five rounds of sexual encounter) and the lecturer is morally bankrupt. We need to counsel our wards properly. I am sure the student in question is over 18 years of age”.
Tales of narrow escape
Most universities and tertiary institutions in the country have Codes of Conduct for Staff and Students which, among others, outlaw sexual harassment of students. In many cases, the penalty for such offence ranges from warning to outright dismissal from the school and prosecution. Such laws are designed to prevent teachers or other staff of tertiary institutions from using sexual gratifications in the discharge of their duties, thereby compromising the integrity of the schools.
Despite the existence of these laws and the risk of being caught, many lecturers in the nation’s tertiary institutions have continued to seek for sexual gratifications from female students for them to pass their courses. Some students whose views Feminine Corner sampled on this issue, confirmed that the culture of sexual harassment of students have been on increase in recent times and appeared to have defied official regulations. Consequently, increasing number of female graduates have one form of awful experience or the other with these sex-demanding teachers during their academic sojourn in the tertiary institution while only smaller percentage escape sexual harassment.
A female student who gave her name as Oluchi disclosed that her graduation could have been delayed because of her refusal to yield to one of her teachers’ sex-for-marks demand. “One of my lecturers invited me to a hotel when I was in my 200 level but I turned his invitation down. Incidentally, he was handling two courses in my department. After our second semester exam he called me and asked if was ready to grant his request now that he had my two courses to mark. But, I told him that I was not ready to sleep with him; and he bluntly told me to get ready to rewrite the courses next semester. I thought it was a joke only for the results to come out and I discovered that my score was missing. I went to his office to complain to him that I wrote the exam and didn’t know why my script should be missing. He asked me the same question again: ‘are you ready’ and I still declined his offer. Instantly, he sent me out of his office and warned me never to come again.
“When I was going through this I had no one to talk to but only God. After another year I wrote the exam and he gave me another missing script, with the fear in me I couldn’t go to his office again and asked why. Until my 400 level, I rewrote the courses again and my results were not released, I pleaded with him but to no avail until when it was time for my clearance. I had all my results but remaining the two courses. However, as God would have it, my department decided to waive two courses because of the mass failure during that year and that was how I scaled through” Oluchi narrated.
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Another victim, Chioma, disclosed that she still regretted her university days because of so many errors she couldn’t correct. Hear her: “I entered the university and graduated without a mentor to put me through. I had a rush from my three toughest male lecturers in my 100 level which made me give up to one. I accepted him out of fear and stories I had heard about him despite that I was not the only one.But I couldn’t question him. We dated up to my first semester 300 level and I was passing his courses. After the semester, I decided to give way to other girls since he had many girls and that became a problem.Since that time, he continued scoring me ‘E’ in the two courses that left. This‘killed’ my ‘GP’ because it was three credit units. That was why I said initially that I entered university without a mentor,” Chioma explained.
Another lady who gave her name as Julietdisclosed her experience thus: “I was one of the people that like to buy text books whenever the lecturers asked us (the students) to do so. First semester of my 300 level, it happened that things were not too good with my parents and we had many text books to buy. Another thing was that the text books were mandatory. I bought the ones my pocket could afford but one of the lecturers insisted that we should buy his, which turned out to be more expensive than the rest. Many of us bought it while some couldn’t. After the exam I went to explain to him my predicament and all I could get at the moment was an invitation to come to a hotel to explain better on what to do before the result will come out.
“By then I had been hearing stories that he liked students with big breast and, unfortunately, I happened to be quite endowed in that ‘department’. I also heard that he was even caught sucking the breast of one female student in his office but that didn’t stop him from making demands on us. When I told him that I could not go to any hotel with him, he asked me to put exactly the amount of that text book in an envelope and submit it to him in the next two hours before he left his office which I did and still thank God it ended that way”,Juliet said.
Tips:
Female students must first learn to dress properly and avoid approaching their teachers in a seductive manner. According to a popular saying, ‘the way you dress would determine the way you will be addressed.’ Most victims of sexual harassment on campus are often culpable in the habit of wearing skimpy dresses which attract the teacher’s attention. Dress properly and limit the temptation. Also avoid flirtatious movements that could give you away as unserious student looking for sexual gratifications to pass. If you are serious with your studies, attend classes, study well and do your assignments and tests.There are high chances that you will never be a victim of sexual harassment.
Schools should create a code of conduct manual or handbook that contains, among other things, its sexual harassment policy that the staff and students should have and read like a bible. Such policy should spell out in clear terms what constitutes sexual offences in the school and the punishments for offenders. Educating students on what constitutes sexual harassment and how to respond to it is a good and necessary first step.
Tertiary institutions that are serious about tackling sexual harassment should establish credible platforms for reporting, investigating and prosecuting sexual harassment allegations as well as take appropriate steps to discipline or punish those found guilty of violating its code of conducts on sexual harassment. Provide a secret or background channel through which complaints of sexual harassment can be lodged and investigated.
It is not enough to have a manual that outlaws sexual harassments on campus. The school authority must match its zero-tolerance policy on sexual misconduct with actions by putting in place necessary mechanisms to ensure that violators do not go free.
Respond to sexual harassment complaints fast. Taking immediate action to investigate and address a situation where a student reports sexual harassment can, not only decrease or eliminate the school’s liability, but also let lecturers know that such inappropriate behavior has consequences and will not be tolerated.
Prevent Retaliation. Many victims of sexual harassment are cautious of coming forward with their complaint because of fear of retaliation by the harasser. This is why it is important to remind school authorities that retaliating against someone for filing a sexual harassment claim is not only wrong but against the law. Also, when exposed lecturers chose to carry out vengeance, it can expose the school management as culpable in the crime and to encourage the harassers.
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