Sexual Harassment: OAU Tops As 35 Lecturers Dismissed In Nigeria

• Yusuf Oketola

NO fewer than 35 lecturers in Nigeria’s tertiary institutions have been indicted and dismissed over sexual misconduct in the past five years, findings by OSUN DEFENDER have revealed.

According to findings by OSUN DEFENDER, out of the 35 cases, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife OAU, topped the list of institutions with the highest number of lecturers indicted for sexual misconduct.

The school has recorded six different cases as of the time of filing this report.

In April 2018, OAU announced indefinite suspension of a Professor of Accounting, Richard Oladele, over sexual harassment.

The university, in February 2020, announced the suspension of a lecturer at the Centre for Distance Learning, Monday Omo-Etan, for sexually molesting a 19-year-old female student.

Also, in 2021, the OAU management dismissed three lecturers from the Departments of English Language, International Relations and Accounting over sexual harassment.

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In April 2022, the university again launched a probe into allegations of sexual harassment against a professor in the Department of Linguistics and African Studies. 

Sexual harassment has been recurring incidence in higher education institutions across the country.

A survey conducted in 2018 by the World Bank Group’s Women revealed that 70 per cent of female graduates from tertiary institutions in Nigeria were sexually harassed in school, with the main perpetrators being classmates and lecturers.

The Senate had in 2021 passed a bill that randy lecturers be subjected to 21 years imprisonment to checkmate sexual harassment on campuses.

However, most of the lecturers indicted and found guilty of sexual misconduct after the bill was passed were only sacked.

Reacting to the development, the National President of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), Prof. Emmanuel Osodeke, urged students to report cases of sexual harassment to the school authorities and the student union.

Osodeke stated that ASUU had an Ethics and Grievances Committee that looked into such cases, stating that boxes where students can anonymously report such cases were placed on campuses.

The ASUU president said: “In the cases that happened in OAU and UNILAG, the lecturers were jailed and in the case of UNICAL, the university has taken action and suspended him.

 “If students have any issues, they should be reported to the Student Union as they did in Calabar and if they have become notorious, what was done in UNICAL should be done and the university should take it up from them.

“The system follows the process but the student has to report if there is a case. We are in a country where a criminal case must be proven beyond reasonable doubt but as a union, in all our campuses, we have an Ethics and Grievances Committee that anyone can go to report any case.

“In many universities, we have boxes where students can write about the problem without having to put their names and drop them in the box. These boxes help to serve as checks but many students are not willing to do so.”