Sexual harassment: While crucifying the culprits, scold victims

By Abiodun Ebun
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The incessant cases of sexual harassment are very common and are right now at its peak  in Nigeria. It’s rampant to a level that no state is excluded, and Nigeria’s higher institutions are not insulated, as there are several reported cases of female students being sexually harassed by lecturers who are bestowed with the responsibility of impacting them with academic knowledge.

We all know that these incidents are inhumane, barbaric and animalistic behavior that should be expelled out of human habitation. It is only the reported ones we are hearing, only God knows  millions of this horrific incident that are happening behind the scene. Thank God, deserved punishment are being meted out on perpetrators.

Sexual harassment in schools is an unwanted and unwelcome behavior that interferes with the right to receive an equal educational opportunity. Almost every female student at a Nigerian institution has either been sexually harassed by a lecturer or knows someone who has been harassed.

In July 2016, a lecturer at the University of Lagos, UNILAG, Akin Baruwa, was reported to have raped an 18-year-old female admission seeker. The lecturer’s friend was said to have approached him to help his daughter secure admission into the university, but rather than help her, Baruwa allegedly took her to his office and raped her. The case was then taken to the Lagos Magistrate Court.

The most famous of the alleged sexual allegations against lecturers in 2018 happened in April, when a professor at the Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Ile-Ife, Richard Akindele, found himself in the middle of a sex-for-mark scandal, after a leaked audio conversation between the lecturer and a female student, Monica Osagie.

The most recent one was that of Professor Boniface Igbeneghu, a former sub-Dean of the University of Lagos, who was recently caught in a documentary video where he was trying to sexually harass a BBC reporter, unknown to him that she had a camera in her body while sharing tales of sex- for- grades with her.

We all agree that what those men are doing to female students is totally wrong, criminal and murderous sin that is not in anyway polite before man and God. But when crucifying the offender, we should as well scold the victims for laying the foundation for being sexually harassed, after all, if a building wall doesn’t open, lizards will find it difficult to sneak inside. Our ladies too must have their own share of the blame,  if we are to be truthful and not biased in our judgement; they are the ones that seduce men with their wears.

The truth must be told, the root cause of this evil is our ladies, who are prone to indecent dressing in the name of fashion to suit the modern era. They are imitating the white women, forgetting that one man’s meat is another man’s poison. We are different in race, character, culture, principle, ideology, environment, philosophy and mentality.

Obscenity of the highest order is now what our ladies call vogue outfit. Immorality is now what we are celebrating in the name of fashion. Indecency is now what our ladies are putting on at the expense of civilization; shameless dressing is now the reigning fashion.

Nigerian female dressing at the moment is so pathetic and alarming to the extent that mothers are not even left out. One will wonder whether mothers and their female children are competing, because it appears that mothers don’t want their daughters to appear more fashionable than them. The result is mothers can no longer control or correct their daughters for putting on bad dresses again; husbands can no longer dictate what their wives or daughters should wear because it will not yield positive results.

Many children will leave their parents’ houses to school with decent clothes but will change it to something else later; many who are known for  Scripture- Union-adherents dressing simply turn to prostitutes on getting to campus.

What lecturers and other staff are witnessing in the hands of the female students is so alarming it is beyond what most of them can control. Our students’ mode of dress these days is too tempting that lecturers can easily fall victim of sexual abuse. Only those living in a higher institution environment can better relay what we are saying here.

Imagine a female student going to her lecturer’s office in the afternoon half naked to submit an assignments, others have already submitted there in the morning. As she rests her hands on a table and bends a bit to talk with the lecturer, he views her blossom breasts exposed by her top or T-shirt? Or a lecturer standing in front of a class, lecturing students with the females amongst them sitting in the front row with extremely short miniskirt, their laps open? Or a lecturer passing by in front  of a lecture theatre and seeing some female students showing one another the panties and bra they wear, or discussing how tough they are on bed? Or a female student calling her male lecturer overnight, telling him that she wants a good grade in his course and fully ready to offer him anything for it? Or a female student who is extraordinarily endowed with big bottom, putting on a tiny and very short gown and cleaning the black board with her back to the lecturer? Or a female student going to the lecture room in ordinary armless shirt, no bra, no underwear.

Research shows that most of the female students who harass or seduce their male lecturers do so in anticipation of academic favours. Such female students are reported to go to the extent of offering to pay for hotel rooms for their male lecturers to have sex with them in exchange for good grades, and even arrange some of their friends for the lecturers in addition.

These are just a little out of what most female students are doing in school. If one is familiar with a student environment very well, one will pity lecturers’ conditions, though harassing a students shouldn’t be a way out, because all female students are not like aforementioned. There are still many of them who will never be blindfolded with Western culture.

Some will say they ‘wanna dress to kill’. No, that is craziness, because dressing is what we put on or wear on our body that makes us look gorgeous to the sight without discomforting ourselves or inconveniencing others. So, don’t dress to kill again, because as you dress to kill, you are definitely killing someone softly. After all, ‘body no be firewood’; we all have blood flowing in our the body, and the body is bound to react to the messages passing across by the sense of sight.

To minimize sexual harassment in Nigeria, it is very important for our women to checkmate themselves, change their American photocopy mode of dressing, embrace our culture and traditional way of life , tailor their dress sense to suit their environment and adjust their fashion outfit to be in conformity with the acceptable standard expected of a typical Nigerian lady. With this, our men will be able to walk freely, without falling into temptation of any lady’s seductive dress, and our ladies in turn will no longer have the fear of being sexually harassed or raped by any man, even in the dark.

Abiodun Ebun is student of Mass Communication department Adekunle Ajasin University is an intership with The Hope