Lecturers that engage in sexual relationship with students would
henceforth bag a five-year jail term if a bill in the Senate, seeking
to completely prohibit any form of sexual relationship between them and
their students is passed and assented to by President Muhammadu Buhari.
The bill on Wednesday, passed for first reading in the Senate.
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 sexual relationship between lecturers and their students, the
News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports.
Briefing journalists after plenary, Omo-Agege said 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 sexual pleasures.
“The bill imposes stiff penalties on offenders in its overall
objective of providing tighter statutory protection for students against
sexual hostility and all forms of sexual 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 sexual harassment made by students.
“The bill expressly allows sexually harassed students, their parents
or guardians to seek civil remedies in damages against sexual predator
lecturers before or after their successful criminal prosecution by the
state,” Omo- Agege said.
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