Tobi Ijalana
The Academic Staff Union of Universities has expressed reservation about the Rape Bill, saying it seemed targeted at male lecturers.
According to ASUU President, Professor Biodun Ogunyemi, apart from the fact that it focuses only on female students alone, a time may come when male lecturers will refuse to teach or supervise female students for fear of petty allegations.
At a Town Hall meeting with critical stakeholders in Jos on Monday, Ogunyemi said ASUU was not yet sure whether or not the lawmakers accommodated its suggestions.
He said:
“Our reaction to that Bill is that it is discriminatory and is targeted at male lecturers.
“We don’t want a situation where male lecturers will begin to say they don’t want to teach female students, because they say we should not smile to female students.
“So a time may come when male lecturer will say, we won’t teach female students, let them get female lecturers, let them get female supervisors.
“l’m not sure we want that, and that is not also healthy for the society. Because at one point or the other, there will be a point of interface. So, what we are seeing is that, we have laws in the society that already address issues of sexual harassment, issues of rape.
“Another form of victimisation is that male students can also be raped in one way or the other and this has not been taken into account or has this type of bill passed.
“We went to the public hearing and we read our objections; well, we have not seen the newly passed bill, but what we are told is that our views will be taken into account and we said, if they are laws in the society that already addressed the issues of harassment and rape, why are we duplicating efforts?
“If it meant to cover all and some strata of the educational system, which means it could be a bill meant to cover all genders or both genders, male or female, which we have not seen. Our worry is that all their talks is centred on the higher institutions, which should stop, because they are stigmatising and is like they are labelling lecturers as criminals or potential criminals.
“We can still raise our voices against that bill to ensure that it will promote equity, fairness and, then, that is where we can have justice for all. We are against sexual harassment of our students. We do not support it in any forms.”
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