Education professionals have condemned in its entirety the growing cases of sex for grades scandals in Nigerian Universities. They, therefore, call for stiffer sanctions to be melted out on randy and erring lecturers found guilty of putting the academic profession into dispute, saying this will help curb unwholesome practices in the education sector.
Reacting to the BBC Africa Eye video year-long investigation documenting the sexual harassment behaviour of some lecturers at the University of Lagos and the University of Ghana, educationists and university professors who shared their views with BusinessDay say this action if not checked will greatly undermine the tertiary education system in the country.
They observe that for decades now, Nigeria tertiary institutions have been fraught with reported incidents of sexual harassment, academic corruption in the form of cash or sex for grades, otherwise known as ‘sorting.’
Educationists opine that the prevalence of these unwholesome practices by academic staff of universities is threatening the fabrics of Nigeria’s citadel of higher learning.
BBC over the weekend released a 13-minute video, where Boniface Igbenuhue, a lecturer in the Department of European Languages, Faculty of Arts, University of Lagos (UNILAG), was seen and heard in one of the discreetly recorded videos telling an undercover reporter who had disguised as a 17-year-old admission seeker to switch off the light so he could kiss her.
“Everything that we discussed here, be assured that your mother will not hear and anything that happens between me and you, nobody will hear about it,” Boniface told the young undercover journalist.
“Sex for a grade in its various forms is not only a dead end for standard in tertiary education institutions, but it is now a cancer since it is practised by those who should stamp out such practices. It is happening slowly and it will soon engulf and destroy our entire society,” Maurice Onyemauche, a Lagos-based education analyst, says.
However, the University of Lagos has suspended Boniface Igbeneghu until investigation is completed. In a similar case, Igbeneghu has also been asked to step down from all his church ministerial assignments.
The National Office of the Four Square Gospel Church has issued a statement addressing the general public on why it would not condone such immoral acts by Boniface Igbeneghu.
“We totally dissociate ourselves from the purported conduct of Dr Igbeneghu and promise to take appropriate measure as soon as the ongoing investigation is concluded,” said the statement signed by Ikechukwu Ugbaja, the national secretary of the denomination.
While it is not far from the truth that some male lecturers in Federal, State and even private Nigerian tertiary institutions take advantage of their positions to sexually exploit their students, reports from 2018 alone show that there were several reported cases of sexual harassment by female students against their lecturers.
Some recent reported cases include Richard Akindele, a professor at the Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Ile-Ife, who found himself in the middle of a sex-for-mark scandal.
An unidentified female student of the University of Lagos equally accused Professor Olusegun Awonusi of the English Department of the institution of always harassing female students each time they go to his office.
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Funke Dezarn, a graduate of Obafemi Awolowo University, OAU, who on Sunday, January 8, 2018, called out to her lecturer Francis Fakoya, a former lecturer at OAU on Facebook over sexual harassment allegation.
Funa Banana, who is said to be a graduate of the University of Port Harcourt, tweeted ”UNIPORT lecturers don’t just ask to sleep with you, they also demand threesome and you must pay for the hotel room and they still end up giving you an E.”
Considering that some bad eggs in the tertiary education system continue to engage in this vices owing to the recognised lapses in the academic system to punish offenders, this leaves thousands of female undergraduate and post-graduate students with the hard choice of either complying to sleep with the demanding lecturers in order to pass or refuse and fail such courses.
Onyemauche observes that the reason for increasing incidents of the sex for grade scandal is because government and university management have failed to provide enough protection for students, especially female students. He adds that some students in their quest to avoid carrying some of the courses over, in some cases an extra year, succumb to the demand of these lecturers.
“University management should be up and doing to clamp down on these prevailing scandals and even be bold to publish the names of lecturers found culpable to serve as a deterrent to others,” Onyemauche says.
The educationist opines that most of the unwholesome practices that happen in the universities system have the footprint of lecturers, querying the reason any right-thinking academic staff will demand sex for a grade if the lecturer is actually qualified to teach.
He insists that it is incumbent on the victims, which most times are female students, to take such matters up with appropriate authorities, adding that it will help draw more attention to the issue.
Nigeria is ignoring sex for grades syndrome in institutions of higher education at its peril as the nation’s international standing may soon be whittled down due to the negative effect of the action of few bad eggs in the system on the entire academic integrity of others, Tolu Odugbemi, former vice-chancellor, Ondo State University of Science and Technology, states.
Describing the menace as earning marks through cash or sex, Odugbemi says the greater danger of this action is that it will impact on the whole integrity of teaching and learning.
Odugbemi is worried that government and parents are unaware of the extent of the rot and that any university administrator that tried to fight sexual harassment is often blackmailed or termed too harsh.
However, some analysts are of the views that blame for the sex to grade scandals cannot entirely be the doing of lecturers as students also contribute to it.
Justus Uzodinma, a research fellow in Lagos, says the reason some female students fall prey to these randy lecturers in universities is to a large extent their quest to pass at all cost and by all means.
Rather than study hard, some of these students prefer a shortcut to get easy marks by offering the lecturers sex or cash in some instances.
Uzodinma is of the view that some female students rather than study hard to pass their examination prefer to seduce their lecturers. There should also be procedures and protocols to follow by the university to stem that out.
