By Stellamaries Amuwa, Abuja
A group known as Centre for Awareness on Justice and Accountability (CAJA), and other Civil Society Organisations have appealed to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to accent the Bill on Anti-Sexual Harassment in Tertiary Institutions across Nigeria.
This was made known during a strategic meeting with the Heads of Tertiary Institutions on the establishment of the Independent Sexual Harassment Prohibition Committees held in Abuja.
According to the Deputy Director, ICPC, Mentor for the Sexual Harassment and Abuse of Office Response Team (SHART), Barr. Adenekan Shogunle, the ICPC supports the bill because it has all the elements that a good law should have. It clearly defines the kind of relationship that should exist between a student and an educator, no room for any kind of love relationship. It is an initiative from the legislature and such laws will strengthen ICPC.
Shogunle said, “What we investigate in ICPC and what we prosecute is corruption and abuse of office. It means, when you use your office or position to take advantage of other people, you have used your position to get corrupt benefits for yourself. In most cases, Institutions where you have people occupying public offices or even private institutions they are given powers to exercise over others like lecturer and student. Some lectures abuse their powers over students by taking advantage of female student example is when someone demands for bribe to do something, in their case they demand for sex to pass the student.
“It is an offence under Section 8,9, and 10 and then Section 19 of the ICPC Act for anybody who is occupying a position of trust to abuse that office to his own advantage and to the disadvantage of others, which is practically what some of these lectures are doing when they take advantage of girls. Under ICPC act what you receive as gratification is not necessarily Naira and Kobo it can be benefit of any kind.”
Meanwhile, the Executive Director, Centre for Awareness on Justice and Accountability (CAJA), Kabiru Dakata, reiterated the need for a law to address the prevalence of sexual harassment in Nigeria Tertiary Institutions “We have a cluster called sexual harassment advocacy cluster which is a consortium of different civil society organizations from different states in Nigeria working in a collaborative way to address the problem of sexual harassment.
“We receive complains from students who are survivors of sexual harassments from different Tertiary Institutions. We are working with some of them and we have seen the effects of sexual harassment on them and our findings reveals that there is no strong law or policy to address this menace. We believe the accent of this Bill which have been passed by the National Assembly and now before Mr. President for accent will address the challenges.”
