By
By Edwin Eriye
Tertiary Institutions around the world are set up with the mandate to produce competent graduates across diverse fields and sectors, necessary to advance the nations’ economic growth as well as global competitiveness via the provision of accessible, relevant, and high-quality education.
This philosophy is fast becoming a cliché in Nigeria’s tertiary institutions since parade sexual predators in the guise of lecturers who sheepishly prey on female students seeking higher education necessary to secure a better life for themselves and family members.
This anomaly has been staring us in the face, woven into society like it is normalcy.
It is almost impossible to find a female student who is not being abused or put under constant sexual pressure by one Mr. “I will give you high marks” in every institution and department. There are many “close the door, switch off light, I will kiss you for a minute” in our universities as amplified by Dr Boniface of the University of Lagos.
These Lecturers readily negotiate high marks with their female students in exchange for canal knowledge of the student, and if declined, the lecturer, or should I say, sexual predator, starts to list out ways he can fail the student with the aim of instilling fear.
This menace is also one of the reasons we have half baked graduates with high grades and bright graduates with low grades.
This is not to say that only the lecturers are culprits here, there are female students in our institutions who seems to make themselves available to these lecturers.
Majority of these lecturers are fathers and husbands, but yet seem to have an Achilles heel with their female students.
The recent investigative report titled “SEX FOR GRADES: UNDERCOVER IN WEST AFRICAN UNIVERSITIES” by the British Broadcasting Commission only brought the menace home. We saw how female reporters, disguised as students were sexually harassed by lecturers from some prestigious universities in Nigeria.
This article is not targeted towards making our lectures appear immoral before the right-thinking people of society except for a few who lack the moral fibre.
Rather, society should be awakened to this menace, likewise our government and institutional heads, stringent policies should be put in place necessary to safeguard the place of the female student in our institutions.
