TheCable

Ovie Omo-Agege, an All Progressives Congress (APC) senator from Delta state, says there is no family in Nigeria that does not have a victim of sexual harassment by male lecturers in tertiary institutions.

Ovie Omo-Agege, who sponsored the sexual harassment in tertiary education institution prohibition bill, said this in an interview published by NAN.

He spoke on the bill which criminalised lecturer-student relationships in tertiary institutions with possibly five-year jail term for defaulting lecturers.

Omo-Agege said the spate of harassment by lecturers in Nigerian higher institutions has “got to its peak.”

He said the senate has to do all it can to put a stop to the trend.

“It is either your wife when she was younger or your daughter, your sister or even a niece who has gone through the tertiary education system at one point or the other,” he said.

“You will find out that they have had this brush with these lecturers who continue to see these young women as acquisitions of their office as lecturers.

“We feel that is unacceptable. We have to put a stop to it.”

The senator said though there was nothing wrong with a younger girl who is mature to date or marry an older man, the senate decided to ban such relationship “so as not to give room for harassment under the guise of a relationship.”

“There is nothing wrong ordinarily when two adults decide to have a relationship but it must be a relationship of equals to the extent that there is consent there is no problem,” he added.

“The case we are making is that given the special nature of that relationship between the lecturer and the student there is no way you can have an informed consent from the female.

“That is why we moved to curtail that relationship and to put an end to it.”