Foundation launches campaign against sexual harassment on campuses

A CHARITY organisation, One Love Foundation, Tuesday launched a campaign against female sexual harassment in tertiary institutions across the country, with a view to curbing the menace.

  Chairman and founder of the foundation, Patrick Eholor, at the state secretariat of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) where he formally launched the campaign, decried the alarming rate of sexual harassment on campuses perpetrated by lecturers.

  He stressed that, “our educational institutions must be free of moral decadence.”

  While noting that the ugly trend seemed to be gaining grounds amongst lecturers in tertiary institutions, he described as unfortunate, a situation where students who were sent to acquire knowledge in schools have become sex toys for their teachers, positing that it was time to put an end to the moral decay in our schools.

   Eholor called for a change of attitude by lecturers, who demand sex for grade from hapless students, noting that lecturers who indulge in these immoral acts, “must stop killing our educational system by demanding sex for grade.”

  At the campaign tagged, “Close their legs and open their brains”, Eholor said it was high time university teachers put an end to the harassment of female students by ensuring that they stop the inhumane treatment on students on campuses.

   “We are tired of the sexual exploitation by lectures in our campuses, exploiting our girls, nieces daughters and sisters for grades. Education is the light of any nation. I am very worried that education in our country is gradually dying because of some of these unscrupulous lecturers in our institutions. I met a girl recently lamenting that her lecturer insists she ‘sorts him.’ 

  “The said lecturer does not even want money and is now insisting on having sex with her against her wish. Sad as it is, he insisted the girl should use her money to pay for a hotel room and also pay him some money after the sex session. This is very painful because even the white people did not exploit us like that,” he said.

   He appealed to relevant government ministries, departments and agencies, both at the state and federal levels, including non-governmental organisation to rise up to the fight against sexual harassment and exploitation of female students by immoral lecturers.

  “I want the judiciary to be inundated with the rise in sexual crimes and harassments going on daily on our campuses. We have children, nieces and sisters in tertiary schools across the country and if the students fail their courses, let the lecturers fail them genuinely and not demand sex in exchange for grades. That is why I have called on the president, minister and commissioners of education nationwide as well as the Inspector General of Police (IGP), to join in the crusade against female students sexual harassment on our campuses because they all have children. We have to take it seriously because this is about our daughters. We must stop locking the brains of our children in our educational system and ensure that our children attend schools and pass their examination creditably, because we can not afford to have children who go to schools and pass their examination exchanging sex for grades,” he said.