The Sexual Harassment Bill sponsored by the Deputy Senate President Ovie Omo-Agege  and President Muhammadu Buhari’s Finance Bill sponsored by Senate Leader, Abdullahi Yahaya scaled second reading on the floor of the Senate on Novemeber 6. 

Ezrel Tabiowo, Special Assistant (Press) to President of the Senate said in a statement that the proposed legislation titled “A Bill for an Act to Prevent, Prohibit and Redress Sexual Harassment of Students in Tertiary Educational Institutions and for other matters connected therewith 2019” has 27 clauses.

Sexual offences defined in the bill includes; sexual intercourse with a student or demands for sex from a student or a prospective student or intimidating or creating a hostile or offensive environment for the student by soliciting for sex or making sexual advances.

Other forms of sexual harassment identified in the bill are; grabbing, hugging, kissing, rubbing, stroking, touching, pinching the breasts or hair or lips or hips or buttocks or any other sensual part of the body of a student; or sending by hand or courier or electronic or any other means naked or sexually explicit pictures or videos or sex related objects to a student, and whistling or winking at a student or screaming, exclaiming, joking or making sexually complimentary or uncomplimentary remarks about a student’s physique or stalking a student.

 

Senator Omo-Agege who maintained that sexual harassment must be defined in tertiary educational institutions as statutory rape with strict liability for offenders to be prosecuted easily, however said extension of the bill to primary, secondary schools, worship centres and work place will not be necessary because the Criminal and Penal codes already adequately deals with these categories with sufficient clarity.

“The most effective way to deal with the offence of sexual harassment in our tertiary institutions is to penalise the very impropriety of the act, with or without consent” Senator Omo-Agege said in his lead debate. 

The bill also prescribes expulsion for students who falsely accuse educators of sexual harassment.

He said, “An educator whose character is maligned is at liberty to sue for defamation under the law of defamation which is well-settled in our jurisprudence and needs no duplication in this bill.”

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