The recent sting operation by one of our daughters working with the BBC has once more brought to the fore, the issue of sexual harassment (SH) in our universities. The girl did not say much new except that she had “desecrated” the “sanctity” of the cold-room and exposed its operations to the uninitiated. In effect, she unmasked a masquerade!
In recent times, I had intervened twice on this SH business. The first instance was when female students of creative arts departments of University of Lagos on 25/6/13 carried placards against their lecherous lecturers who demanded sex for marks. As one of the placards lamented their mentors had transformed into tormentors!
An online commentator had linked the increasing SH to the absence of cultists who would have kept the lecturers in check, poor research output (as lecturers have no time for research), found all lecturers guilty (arguing that the innocent ones are guilty by allowing the randy ones to get away with it) and excluded female lecturers.
Of course, that was (and still is) the usual stereotype as the public sees all lecturers as lords of debauchery and dealers in handouts. Ik Muo (2013): Educational crises: sorting, SH & allied matters.
My second intervention occurred when a female student of Nekede Polytechnic, Owerri boldly wrote an “application” to her lecturer asking him to get in touch if he was interested in the business. This girl crudely and brazenly offered sexual gratification to the lecturer by asking him to come and chop. (Ik Muo, Sex for Grades, sorting and allied maters; Guardian, 30/10/19).
Since then, a lot has happened on the SH environment. A professor at OAU is still in jail for SH; another professor, one of the principalities at UNILAG also made front-page news but not much has been heard of the matter. Many lecturers have had their careers destroyed because of the “temporary madness” that led them to the forbidden fruit, usually seated in a busy environment.
This third intervention is as a result of the recent BBC expose. But before that, I wish to draw our attention to the case of a female PE teacher and basketball coach with Port Barre High School, Nicole Aymond, who was arrested for having sex with three of her students. According to the Daily Star (UK), the case saw the light when one of the mothers reported to the police in Louisiana. There was also the report the Guardian (UK) that SH has risen to “academic proportions in UK universities. So? Females are “fully” involved and it is not a Nigerian/Ghanaian affair.
It is not only the lecturers who initiate the business; there are many female students who desire Sexually Transmitted Degrees on the prowl. Also, male students are also subject to SH and in this man-to-man marriage era, it is even more complicated
The major attraction of the BBC report was the UNILAG lecturer who gave the lady a “glimpse” of the cold room and the Ghanaian fellow who alleged that a student inserted a nude picture plus her phone number within her answer scripts. (Maybe, she learnt from the Nekede student!) In the aftermath of these, a professor has declared with professorial finality that the core of the problem were female students who want Sexually Transmitted Degrees (STDs).
A student unionist has also opened an online NANS SH Registrar as a name and shame strategy to capture and document all lecturers who demand sex or cash for grades. You will also recall that Senator Omo-Agege had sponsored a bill on SH in tertiary institutions. He cleverly forgot or pretended to forget that SH takes place at the national assembly!
There was an anonymous online treatise on this matter, which I came across recently. I could not trace the originator but the stories were quite revealing. There were the stories of a lady who was “chopping” a small boy in the face-me-I-face-you compound and when caught by the boys friends who peeped through the key-hole, she accused the boy of rapping her; a junior secondary school girl who offered herself to the writer to be his “first babe” before all the senior girls who had been strategizing on how to capture him succeeded; and how a group of girls, amazed at his resistance to their body language, sent one of their friends to confirm that he was really a man.
And these are secondary school students. Another unknown writer has also reminded us that there is, sex for employment, sex for promotion, sex for accommodation, sex for transfer, sex for anointing, sex for general assistance and sex for any imaginable thing!
On this SH matter, I still stand where I stood in my two earlier interventions in 2013 and 2016 and that is that we must recognise these self-evident truths as the first step in addressing the SH scourge.
It is not only the lecturers who initiate the business; there are many female students who desire Sexually Transmitted Degrees on the prowl. Also, male students are also subject to SH and in this man-to-man marriage era, it is even more complicated. Also, SH takes place in secondary schools and in some instances, in primary schools. It is not limited to universities and academic institutions; it is at the NASS, the churches and mosques, in the markets, barracks and indeed, EVERYWHERE.
Indeed, we are all guilty! I think that SH is in the societal DNA and that it cannot be legislated out of existence. It is a societal scourge everywhere, including the Whiteman’s land where merely looking at a woman is considered SH. Institutions should design practical and well publicised SH policies, which should be operationalised and not just referred to the drawer. I know that women are involved but I believe that the men have a lot more to do in this matter. We should develop self-discipline and be able to help our female compatriots without ending up at their holy of holies.
Even if they offer, must we accept? It is a matter of integrity; it is a matter of ethics and it is a matter of spirituality. So, help us God!
Other matters: I am finger-capped!
On Monday, 21/10/19, one naughty nail decided to teach me a lesson by chopping off a part of my right index finger. I ignored the nail and the wound and went about my duties. By Tuesday, it was still bleeding intermittently and I ended up at clinic, where I received an anti-tetanus injection and had the wound dressed and plastered and that was where the real problem started.
The young nurse (many of them are so aged that I thought they had scrapped the nursing program in our university) who dressed the wound advised that water must not touch the distressed and plastered finger for at least two days. And that complicated my “problems”. I became incapacitated! I could not write; I could not have a “full” bath; I could not have a firm handshake, I could not even wash my tea cup or plate and worse of all, I could not eat what I wanted. I tried the left-hand option but it did not work! For instance, on Wednesday, 23/10/19, I decided to visit an under-the-bridge “joint” to swallow “ebiripo”, a local delicacy of pounded cocoyam, which I usually transported with vegetable soup and supported with bush meat.
I had gone half way when I realised that it would not work. I could not use my hand, to mould the thing, (the natural mode) I could not use cutleries due to the texture of the food and even if I could, the “mama-put” has no provision for fork & knife. Even then, how could I maul the roasted bushmeat, which I had to grasp firmly before devouring? I surrendered, did a U-turn and settled for beans, plantain and fried fish! All this just because of one finger? Indeed, I had become finger-capped! Mercifully, the plaster was removed on 26/10/19 and things are returning to normal. I comfortably and successfully ate “ebiripo” on 28/10/19, and without cutleries!
We learn from experience and I have just learnt from this one. I learnt about the importance of the index finger in our lives and operational capabilities. Secondly, I thanked God that I am fully, fearfully and wonderfully made (Ps 139:14). I then imagined what those who are handicapped, leg-capped, eye-capped, ear-capped, brain-capped and money-capped are going through and resolved to be more compassionate towards them.
IK MUO
