The lawmaker representing Egbeda/Ona Ara Federal constituency in the Federal House of Representatives, Hon. Akin Alabi, Monday said any university lecturer found guilty in a sex-for-grades scandal should be sacked and jailed.
“Any lecturer exposed in the #SexForGrades documentary should be sacked, arrested and jailed,” Alabi said in a tweet.
BBC released a snippet of their Africa Eye investigation into the notorious act of university lecturers soliciting sex from female students in exchange for grades. The video sparked outrage on social media in the early hours of Monday.
While Professor Richard Akindele is currently serving jail term after he was sacked by the Obafemi Awolowo University in the first publicised sex-for-grades scandal, there is no law that expressly prohibits sexual harassment in tertiary institutions.
The Guardian reports that the Nigerian Senate passed a bill in May 2016 to sentence lecturers caught sexually harassing students to a five-year jail term.
The Sexual Harassment in Tertiary Education Institution Prohibition Bill, however, is yet to be signed into law by President Muhammadu Buhari.
In the investigative report, BBC exposed lecturers of prestigious universities in West Africa that sexually harass and demand sex from female students.
A lecturer and former sub-dean of faculty of art at the University of Lagos (UNILAG), Boniface Igbeneghu was caught on camera sexually harassing an undercover reporter who posed as a 17-year-old girl seeking admission into the institution.
Also, a lecturer at the University of Ghana, Dr Paul Kwame Butakor was exposed alongside Igbeneghu, a head pastor at a Foursquare Gospel Church, Lagos in the 13-minute snippet of the investigative report.
Igbeneghu told Kiki Mordi, the undercover reporter who posed as a 17-year-old admission seeker, how some lecturers in the institution tossed female students for sex.
He had invited the teenager to his office on three occasions for tutorials before making sexual advances towards her.
“Do you want me to kiss you?,” Igbeneghu asked the supposed 17-year-old admission seeker in the video. “Switch off the light, lock the door and I will kiss you for a minute.
The senior lecturer revealed how he and some of his colleagues fondle students at the “cold room” of the UNILAG Staff Club.
He said in the “cold room”, lecturers meet to “touch students breast, smooch them.”
UNILAG has since the release of the video disassociated itself from the behaviour of Dr Igbeneghu.
“We have zero tolerance towards sexual harassment,” the university said.
