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Combating The Sex For Marks Menace In Nigerian Institutions -By Promise Eze

ASUU should ensure that the bad eggs terrorising the bottoms of young female students be kicked out and punished if caught.

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Promise Eze

Why some Nigerian Lecturers are known to love bottom power more than common sense, no one can understand.

The social media have been abuzz with dozens of sex for marks cases in Nigerian tertiary institutions for a long time now. However, the story that we would never forget is that of a Nigerian Professor, Richard Akindele, a lecturer in Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), who pressurized a female student of the school, Monica Osagie, into serving him with five rounds of sex for a pass in an exam last year.

Moniga Osagie would never be forgotten for her boldness in calling out the randy lecturer, an act which ultimately led to his expulsion from the university. He was sentenced to spend two years of his life behind bars afterwards despite the fact that he pleaded guilty to the charges levied against him. But for one exposed sex for marks cases in Nigeria, I believe that there exist a thousand cases which would never be brought to light because of shame, fear and threats. Many will remain silent until they graduate. Why shouldn’t they? Haven’t you read of cases where victims who gathered the courage to report sensitive issues like this to the school management received painful backlashes from the lecturer in question? Their reports are rarely believed anyway due to the “problem of proper and convincible evidence”. Don’t you know that those who resist the overtures of randy lecturers get to suffer greatly? That’s the reason for this deadly silence. Daily Trust in 2015 gave an example of the case of Mairo, a student of a polytechnic in one of the states in the north-west zone of the country who was constantly harassed by one of her lecturers. She refused to yield to his overtures and she kept failing the course until the lecturer left the school. Female students are being forced to swallow these pitiful experience knowing full well that justice may never prevail, knowing full well that they may lose their admission if they do expose these crimes.

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Welcome to Nigeria where lecturers are treated like gods and are rarely checked upon. Welcome to Nigeria where some lecturers  consider themselves to be high priests who demand female students to present their bottoms and vaginas on their nasty altars on a daily basis. Welcome to Nigeria where lecturers considers sex to be more important and essential than allowing students pass exams and tests by reading their books. It’s against this backdrop that the sex for marks menace prevails. The check and balance idea is totally inexistent in public universities and in most private universities. It’s a shame how varsity teachers seek to insert their marauding ugly-looking manhood into the clitoris of female students all in the name of “awarding” marks. Recall also how in 2015  Professor Cyril Ndifon, Dean of the Faculty of Law University of Calabar, was alleged to have sexually assaulted a 20-year-old, 400-level law student. Now this was no ordinary lecturer. This was the head of a faculty. This reveals the extent to which our universities have decayed. If the head of lecturers would engage in such a nasty act then what shall his subordinates do? Why should female students be taken advantaged of in tertiary institutions? This menace will continue to grow in a system where the victims of sexual assault are victimized, ostracized and punished for reporting issues like this.

Professor Cyril Ndifon is not the only dean who have had his image destroyed by sex for marks  allegations. Only recently in August 4 a Uni Abuja dean was indicted in sex for marks scandal. The sex hungry lecturer was caught in a sting operation at a hotel in Gwarimpa area of Abuja, where he had gone to have an affair with the student whom he had solicited sex to award marks. The dean was caught pants down in the hotel room trying to have sex with the student.

It is heart breaking and disheartening that parents would send their girls to school only to find out that their daughters are being used as sex tools, sex machines and sex toys in the hands of randy lecturers. Should this continue to be the trend? These young girls cannot continue to suffer like this. These young students should not suffocate their pains with the pillow of fear.

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When would ASUU strike a decisive blow on the cheeks of this cancer destroying the fabrics of our educational institutions? We see ASUU whimpering and yelping anytime it needs money from the federal government. To home in their request into the heart of the government they embark on nation wide strikes. This is good but ASUU should learn to embark on nation wide strikes too in respect to fighting this sex for marks menace. ASUU should ensure that the bad eggs terrorising the bottoms of young female students be kicked out and punished if caught. Why tolerate varsity teachers who are prone to engaging in playful or boisterous sex with students who are anxious to learn and excel? ASUU, the “mother” of almost all lecturers in Nigeria has an important role to play in fighting out this menace.

Also there is a need to establish committees or special units in every university which shall be saddled with the responsibility of looking into issues like this. Female students need not die in silence any longer. Nigerian female students need not suffer and smile. These committees should be independent bodies and shall by in no wise be made up of lecturers or teaching staff. Their responsibility should entail looking into alleged rape cases and if beyond every reasonable such allegations prove to be true, they should be tendered to the school management and finally to the police. Creating committees like this would help to break the silence and guarantee that justice is pursued.

No thanks to the incompetent Students’ Union bodies in Nigerian universities. Apart from organising campaigns, sports and semester parties; commissioning projects as irrelevant as a wall clock and white board markers, they have appeared to be almost useless in the fight against sex for marks. I do not know why they have chosen to play a blind eye but they cannot afford to be quiet any longer. Just as they would demand the school management to fix good toilets seats in rotten rest rooms, they must begin to protest heavily against this sickness bedeviling Nigerian universities.

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Students should be awarded grades by using the proper evaluative measurements such as tests and exams and not by many times they climb the beds or office tables of their lecturers.

Promise Eze is a student of Usmanu Danfodiyo University, Sokoto and writes at ezep645@gmail.com.

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