Rape Bill: ASUU Condemns Bill, Says It Is Targeted At Male Lecturers

The Academic Staff Union of Universities, (ASUU), has said the recent Bill passed by the National Assembly on sexual harassment and rape is aimed at victimizing university lecturers.

ASUU added that the bill was directly targeted at its members.

Ekohotblog reported on Tuesday 7, July 2020, that a bill seeking to stop sexual abuse of female students in the nation’s tertiary institutions has been passed.

It also reported that the bill was passed by the Senate after the third read, following the consideration of the report of the Committee on  Judiciary, Human Rights and Legal Matters presented by the Chairman, Senator Opeyemi Bamidele, All Progressives Congress, APC, Ekiti Central.

This was disclosed by National President of ASUU,P rof. Biodun Ogunyemi, during  a Town Hall meeting on Monday,  organized by the university of Jos chapter of the union with key stakeholders in Jos.

He expressed that even though the bill was not yet signed into law, the Union is not comfortable with the bill been passed by the Assembly.

While stating the union’s reaction to the bill,  Prof.Ogunyemi noted that, the Bill is discriminatory and also targeted at the male lecturers.

”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 supervisor.

“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 addressed issues of sexual harassment, issues of rape.

“Another form of victimization 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.

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“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?” he said.

Prof. Ogunyemi further argued that, “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 worries 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,” he said.