Senate Reintroduces Sexual Harassment Bill After UNILAG Sex For Grades Scandal

The Nigerian Senate on Wednesday reintroduced the sexual harassment bill which failed to pass in the House of Representatives in 2016.

The Sexual Harassment Prohibition Bill, 2019, sponsored by Deputy Senate President Ovie Omo-Agege, is being reconsidered in the middle of the ‘sex for grades’ scandal rocking the University of Lagos (UNILAG).

A UNILAG lecturer-cum-pastor, Boniface Igbeneghu, had been caught on camera soliciting sex from an investigative reporter who posed as a 17-year-old girl seeking admission into the institution.

At the senate plenary on Wednesday, the clerk of the senate, Nelson Ayewoh, read the title of the bill after which it was read for the first time.

Meanwhile, former senate president Bukola Saraki, who presided over the senate that passed the bill in 2016, called on President Muhammadu Buhari and the 9th National Assembly to revisit the sexual harassment bill in the wake of the “sex for grades” scandal at UNILAG.

Saraki, while reacting to the scandal on his twitter page on Monday, said the senate under his watch passed the “Sexual Harassment in Tertiary Education Institution Prohibition Bill to prescribe a 5 year jail term for any lecturer, educationist or person in a position of authority in any tertiary institution in Nigeria found guilty of such conduct.”

He urged institutions in the country to conduct robust investigations, “not only on the accused but also for all other reports and complaints that come in,” stressing the need for institutions to be made safe for students.