An anatomy of parliamentary sexploits, By Chidi Anselm Odinkalu

2025 has not been straightforward on Nigerians. The economic system has seemed removed from brilliant; the climate has been suffocating; and value of residing has been stubbornly oppressive. With rising massacres within the Center Belt, and Borno State within the north-east apparently shedding floor to the nihilism of Boko Haram terror, violence stays unremitting. Within the Niger Delta, a judicially manufactured disaster of political godfathering threatens severe repercussions for the nationwide purse and endangers lease and royalties from the wells of oil-rich Rivers State. All this unfolds below the watch of a president who seems to have grown right into a behavior of sending episodic missives to Nigerians from his most popular base in Paris and sometimes paying a go to to Abuja from there.

Every of those developments is eminently newsworthy. Collectively, they need to grip attentions concerning the goings-on within the sixth most populous nation on the earth. As an alternative, the largest information out of Nigeria this 12 months is the failure of Nigeria’s males of energy to handle libidinal sexploits within the office, and the accompanying tendency to default to abuse of energy to inter any ensuing embarrassments.

Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan is the Senator for Kogi Central and, by herself, 25% of the feminine contingent within the Nigeria’s Senate. Her detailed allegations of sexual harassment in opposition to Senate President, Godswill Akpabio, would in all probability have way back run their course if the chamber and its management had approached the matter with due regard to any rule e book. As an alternative, they selected to orchestrate the longest-running political cleaning soap opera in Africa’s most populous nation.

As with these items, most individuals now not bear in mind the grievance as a result of the cover-up procured by abuse of energy has been extra spectacular. It has assured that this story has “dominated conversations and highlighted longstanding ladies’s rights points within the socially conservative nation, the place no girl has ever been elected governor, vice-president or president.”

For a lot of, any suggestion that it’s irregular for a person to not get excited within the presence of a girl within the office is perplexing to the purpose of vexing. In a case in 2016, a lawyer representing a strong worldwide organisation in a case of sexual harassment earlier than the Nationwide Industrial Court docket of Nigeria (NICN), informed the decide that “it’s anticipated amongst adults {that a} man would naturally chase a girl, make romantic overtures.” Few have paused to ask what precisely “sexual harassment” means, why it issues and why it’s such a lingering subject in each work areas and public establishments.

In 2011, the Lagos State Prison Legislation made sexual harassment a felony. The legislation describes the crime to incorporate “unwelcome sexual advances, request for sexual favours, and different visible, verbal or bodily conduct of a sexual nature which when submitted to or rejected” might have an effect on or unreasonably intrude with the employment or instructional alternatives of an individual; develop into an element of their educational or employment resolution, or create an intimidating, hostile or offensive studying or working atmosphere. Different states like Ekiti and Kaduna States have adopted the instance of Lagos in making sexual harassment against the law.

Sexual harassment can even create civil legal responsibility. Stella Odey was a widow with 4 youngsters when the event organisation, CUSO, employed her to your years in January 2015 as mission supervisor. At work, she discovered herself below a male boss who repeatedly informed her that “her voice arrests him, slapping her buttocks and embracing her in opposition to her will and consent.” He was reluctant to listen to her protestation that she desired to remarry.

In July 2015, 14 days after Ms Odey gave her boss a card inviting him to her marriage ceremony, he summarily sacked her. In upholding her declare of illegal termination, the Nationwide Industrial Court docket identified that “the principle level in allegations of sexual harassment is that unwelcome sexual conduct has invaded the office.”

4 years earlier, the identical courtroom awarded fairly substantial damages in opposition to Microsoft in Nigeria in favour of a feminine employees whose employment the nation supervisor, a person, terminated after she refused his sexual advances.

Whereas parliamentary sexploits within the Senate have introduced much-needed consideration to the topic typically, it stays the case that Nigeria’s instructional and educational establishments are the locations most persistently related to sexual harassment. Almost 45 years in the past, in 1981, a mere two years after Senator Akpoti-Uduaghan was born, the report of the Presidential Fee on Wage and Circumstances of College Workers chaired by Professor Samuel Cookey acknowledged an incipient downside of sexual harassment within the universities. Since then, the problem has grown in each scope and significance.

In 2024, a pioneering Baseline Survey performed below the auspices of the Committee of Gender Administrators in Nigerian Universities in partnership with the non-governmental group, Alliances for Africa, discovered that no less than 63% of feminine college students in universities within the nation had skilled sexual harassment. The perpetrators included lecturers, employees, and college students. The report acknowledged an absence of progress on this subject, citing “stigmatisation, absence of ample institutional help, energy imbalances between victims and perpetrators, lack of clear insurance policies and procedures for reporting incidents.”

An ongoing scandal on the Federal College, Oye Ekiti (FUOYE), involving allegations of sexual harassment in opposition to the Vice-Chancellor, Abayomi Fasina, a professor, illustrates how unhealthy the scenario is. On the finish of final 12 months, it emerged {that a} feminine senior director on the college, Folasade Adebayo, had accused the Vice-Chancellor of labor place reprisals after she allegedly rejected his persistent sexual advances.

The Ekiti State Gender-Primarily based Violence (Prohibition) Legislation creates a felony crime of sexual harassment which happens when there may be “undesirable conduct of a sexual nature or different conduct based mostly on intercourse or gender which is persistent or severe and demeans, humiliates, or creates a hostile or intimidating atmosphere.” To show her allegations, Mrs. Adebayo produced a sound clip of a phone dialog with the Vice-Chancellor in 2023 through which he may very well be heard pleading that he would make her pleased so long as she made him pleased, and confessing: “Let me let you know, I’m dying inside for you.”

After what was speculated to be an inner investigation, the Governing Council issued an announcement this previous week claiming that it had cleared the Vice-Chancellor of the allegations. As an alternative it ordered numerous disciplinary measures in opposition to Mrs. Adebayo and the management of the Workers Union of the College (which made her allegations public), “for bringing the identify of the college into disrepute.”

With out difficult the provenance of the sound clip or the veracity of its contents, the Governing Council as an alternative “condemned the recording of the Vice-Chancellor with out his information and consent.” But, it resolved to advise the Vice-Chancellor “in writing to be extra cautious and circumspect in coping with subordinates.” Not completed with this piece of tortured administrative theatre, the Governing Council then introduced that it might represent a “peace and reconciliation committee to look into all the problems within the college.”

The efficiency of the Senate within the institutional calisthenics of impressed cover-up simply pales into insignificance beside the mastery displayed by the Governing Council of FUOYE. Below cowl of excessive statutory authority, the Governing Council procured the burial of great allegations that may very well be legal in Ekiti whereas implicitly validating their veracity. Why would the Vice-Chancellor want gratuitous recommendation of the type the Council might be providing if the recording lacked credibility? Unsurprisingly, the college employees union promptly denounced the choice.

The larger downside is that the Council by this resolution destroys any hope of treatments for college students, employees or anybody with credible claims of sexual harassment within the college. As an alternative, they assure precisely the other of  what the college seeks to keep away from: resort to public advocacy by victims. Anticipating that, the Governing Council of FUOYE says it’s going to expedite the manufacturing of insurance policies on cyber-bullying and use of social media. The intention is to not assist victims or to deliver perpetrators to account. Somewhat, it seeks to perpetuate a tradition of cover-up. Anybody on the lookout for the place the boys in Senate learnt their artwork after they had been boys ought to look no additional than a Nigerian College.

Chidi Anselm Odinkalu, a lawyer, teaches on the Fletcher College of Legislation and Diplomacy and may be reached by means of chidi.odinkalu@tufts.edu.