A bill for a law which prescribes five-year jail term for lecturers who engage in intimate relationship with students was passed for first reading in the Senate on Wednesday.
The bill, sponsored by Sen. Ovie Omo-Agege (Labour-Delta Central) and co-sponsored by 46 other senators, seeks to completely prohibit any form of intimate relationship between lecturers and their students.
Briefing newsmen after plenary, Omo-Agege said that the nation’s institutions of higher learning must be sanitised to rid them of lecturers who saw female students as “prize’’.
According to him, when the bill is passed and signed into law, any lecturer found guilty will be liable to a jail term of up to five years but not less than two years with no option of fine.
“When passed into law, it makes it a criminal offence for any educator in a university, polytechnic or any other tertiary educational institution to violate or exploit the student-lecturer fiduciary relationship for intimate pleasures.
“The bill imposes stiff penalties on offenders in its overall objective of providing tighter statutory protection for students against intimate hostility and all forms of intimate harassment in tertiary schools.
“The bill provides a compulsory five-year jail term for lecturers who sexually harass students.
“When passed into law, vice chancellors of universities, rectors of polytechnics and other chief executives of institutions of higher learning will go to jail for two years if they fail to act within a week on complaints of intimate harassment made by students.
“The bill expressly allows sexually harassed students, their parents or guardians to seek civil remedies in damages against intimate predator lecturers before or after their successful criminal prosecution by the State.
“The bill also seeks to protect, from intimate harassment, prospective students seeking admissions into institutions of learning, students of generally low mental capacity and physically challenged students,’’ he stated.
The lawmaker said that it was practicable in other climes as “honour codes’’ but stressed that it should be domesticated in Nigeria in the Penal form.
The bill reads: “an educator shall be guilty of committing an offence of intimate harassment against a student if he/she has intimate intercourse with a student.
“He or she shall be guilty if he has intimate intercourse with a student or demands for s*x from a student or a prospective student as a condition to study in an institution.
“He or she shall be guilty if he has intimate intercourse with a student or demands for s*x from a student or a prospective student as a condition to the giving of a passing grade.
“ He or she shall be guilty if he solicits s*x from or makes intimate advances at a student when the intimate solicitation or intimate advances result in an intimidating, hostile or offensive environment for the student.
“He or she shall be guilty if he directs or induces another person to commit any act of intimate harassment under this Act, or cooperates in the commission of intimate harassment by another person.
“He or she shall be guilty if he grabs, hugs, rubs or strokes or touches or pinches the breasts or hair or lips or hips or buttocks or any other sensual part of the body of a student.
“He or she shall be guilty if he displays, gives or sends by hand or courier or electronic or any other means Unclad or sexually explicit pictures or videos or s*x related objects to a student.
“He or she shall be guilty if he whistles or winks at a student or screams or exclaims or jokes or makes sexually complimentary or uncomplimentary remarks about a student’s physique.’’
The bill also has provisions to sanction students who falsely accuse lecturers of intimate harassment. Such students could face dismissal from the school but no jail term was prescribed.
According to the bill, the only exemption is where the student is legally married to the lecturer before admission in the school as a student.
It states that the consent of the student shall not serve, in anyway, as a defence as the bill seeks to completely ban lecturer-student relationships.
The bill also imposes on institutions the responsibility to protect students who initiates a intimate harassment charge.
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