Nigerian Student Wahala No. 5: Avoiding Sex Predators Doubling as Lecturers and Professors

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I have to admit that I don't know which is worse: a cultist pressuring a girl to be his girlfriend and/or for sex, OR a lecturer pressuring a girl (his student) for sex. But for today, we'll focus on the latter.  It should also be noted that lazy students also use this knowledge in their favor, i.e. they approach lecturers and offer to sleep with them in exchange for good grades, when these students have not done the assigned work.

If you know anything at all about the inner workings of education in Nigeria's higher institutions, then you'll know that this has been a problem for more than a decade.  It was a problem when I was in school, and it still is a problem now. 

Lecturers and Professors pick on their female students (and sometimes male students, if they swing that way too) and threaten them with failure if they don’t give in to their demands.  And since the wonders of the female anatomy have inspired countless ballads and songs, you should know that the lecturer is not just asking the female student to hold his hands on cold nights.  Nope.  He's asking her for sex.

I am sure male students face the same demands from female lecturers (and even from other male lecturers), but overwhelmingly, the typical scenario involves a male lecturer and a female student.

I won't bother going into the morality of this act, because on its face, it is clearly a morally reprehensible act and should not even be happening.  What I want to discuss though, is what to do about it. 

While the most obvious solution might be to fire the lecturers and professors who are caught or suspected, I don’t think that will solve the issue.  Why? Because lecturers asking students for sex is a symptom of a more serious problem, and unless we correct that problem, this lecturer wahala will remain a recurring problem. The more serious problem is the abuse of power. 

The lecturer who knows that a student cannot graduate without passing his particular course (and where he is the only person who teaches that course) is a dangerous person when he abuses that power.  If students know that reporting this lecturer will result in little or no action, or will even back-fire (e.g. where the lecturer turns the table on the student and frames her/him for something else), then they would rather suffer in silence. 

I believe that schools already have procedures in place for dealing with this menace, but they are either outdated or ineffective.  If the rules barring this behavior are enforced, then I believe we will see fewer cases of lecturers victimizing students.

Question: How can we deal with the problem of lecturers and professors preying on students for sex? Kindly share. 

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