“May your lecturers never notice you”: Sex for grades and predatory lecturers
On Monday, BBC Africa released its sex for grades documentary. In the documentary, some male lecturers from the University of Lagos and the University of Ghana were secretly filmed making sexual advances to undercover journalists who had disguised as young female students.
Unsurprisingly, the documentary was the centre of discourse on social media and even elicited reactions from politicians who (like most people) acted like this was the first time they were hearing about situations like this and that the BBC documentary was a great revelation for them. Was it not about sex-for-grades that Eedris Abdulkarim sang about, literally 16 years ago, in his 2003 hit “Mr. Lecturer”?
When I got admitted into the university in 2008, the main prayer point of my family was: “may your lecturers never notice you,” and the advice of my aunties: don’t make eye contact with your male lecturers, don’t be too friendly with them. This is still the same advice most girls get when they set off for universities in Nigeria.
“I have seen cases in federal universities like Obafemi Awolowo University where lecturers have asked married women to sleep with them for marks and then the husbands of these women come to beg these lecturers, sometimes soliciting the intercessions of other authority figures. ”
On one hand, it shows the rather troubling way we address problems in Nigeria. Instead of coming up with real solutions, we find ways to make an unpleasant situation bearable. On the other hand, it shows that the problem of sexual harassment in Nigerian universities is entrenched in the system such that I am tempted to say it is a cultural problem.
The prevailing culture in the Nigerian society is patriarchial and suppresses the woman. Many men believe that they can do things and get away with it. A man can rape a woman and the woman would be shut down if she goes to the police.
It is almost a normal thing in the Nigerian society that men get away with such things. Most girls I have talked to have been sexually assaulted in different degrees—raped, touched inappropriately, stalked. It is almost the norm.
At the core of the problem of sex for grades in universities is the power that university lecturers have and, with unchecked power, come abuse.
I have seen cases in federal universities like Obafemi Awolowo University where lecturers have asked married women to sleep with them for marks and then the husbands of these women come to beg these lecturers, sometimes soliciting the intercessions of other authority figures.
It is also the same in private universities. Despite how religious and strict the private university I attended was, there were lecturers that would say things like: “if you don't allow me to make out with you, I won’t let you pass this course”. You might need help in understanding a course and be asked for sexual favours in return: “Come later in the evening to my office, I will explain what the assignment is about.”
There are more difficult situations such as having one of such lecturers as a dissertation supervisor in your final year. I knew people who were unlucky and had those kinds of supervisors.
There are girls who are stubborn and those are used as examples. “Do you want to be like her and fail this course for the next 3 years”. So it’s a “be like her” or “give in” situation.
I have often asked myself what I would do if I were given this kind of option today. I am not sure I’d fight it. Think of the 22-year-old girl in her final year at the university working hard to graduate with a first-class and someone wants to destroy it. Imagine the ripple effect of not finishing with a first for such a girl: the scholarships she might not get, the jobs she cannot get into. Or imagine the young girl who is about to be dropped from a second class to a third class. How many essays can one write to explain that the reason she retook an exam three times was because a lecturer wanted to sleep with her? No one cares! In the end, many girls give in to the demands of predatory lecturers because of the future they want to have.
Were I willing to fight off a predatory lecturer, how would I go about it? As far as I know, there are no structures in Nigerian university for reporting sexual harassment. If there are, they are clearly inefficient.
If society is really serious about putting an end to sexual harassment in universities, it needs to start empowering women. There have to be centres in universities where sexual harassment issues are handled, in a way that respects the confidentiality of the girl and protects her. There have to be publicised, easy, and efficient procedures to follow, backed up by a transparent adjudicatory process, meaningful punitive measures, and remedies.
If a lecturer is guilty of harassment, he should be put on an offenders list so that he cannot be employed in another university. Once people know they can be brought to book, they will start to behave.
Ayomide Oluseye is a PhD candidate at The Open University, UK. She researches and writes on teenage pregnancy and motherhood in Nigeria.