The bill proposes up to 14 years jail term, with a minimum of five years, without an option of fine for any educator who commits sexual offences in tertiary institutions.
It has been a thing of concern over the years hearing pools of negative reports of sexual harassment. The prevalence of this act has caused so many havoc in Nigerian University and must be brought under control.
Nigerian
lawmakers on Wednesday debated a critical bill – the sexual harassment bill –
which prescribes 14 years jail term for lecturers who sexually harass students.
The bills, which scaled second reading on the floor of the Senate, were
sponsored by the Deputy Senate President, Ovie Omo-Agege and Senate Leader,
Abdullahi Yahaya, respectively.
The proposed legislation titled, ‘A Bill for an Act to Prevent, Prohibit and
Redress Sexual Harassment of Students in Tertiary Educational Institutions and
for other matters connected therewith 2019’, has 27 clauses.
The bill proposes up to 14 years jail term, with a minimum of five years,
without an option of fine for any educator who commits sexual offences in
tertiary institutions.
The bill defines sexual offences as including sexual intercourse with a student
or demands for sex from a student or a prospective student or intimidating or
creating a hostile or offensive environment for the student by soliciting for
sex or making sexual advances.
Other forms of sexual harassment identified in the bill are “grabbing,
hugging, kissing, rubbing, stroking, touching, pinching the breasts or hair or
lips or hips or buttocks or any other sensual part of the body of a
student”.
Also included are “sending by hand or courier or electronic or any other
means naked or sexually explicit pictures or videos or sex-related objects to a
student, and whistling or winking at a student or screaming, exclaiming, joking
or making sexually complimentary or uncomplimentary remarks about a student’s
physique or stalking a student”.
Senator Omo-Agege, in his lead debate, said: “The most effective way to deal
with the offence of sexual harassment in our tertiary institutions is to
penalize the very impropriety of the act, with or without consent.”
He, however, added, “An educator whose character is maligned is at liberty to
sue for defamation under the law of defamation which is well-settled in our
jurisprudence and needs no duplication in this bill.”
