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.
Special Assistant
(Press) to President of the Senate, Ezrel Tabiowo, in a statement said 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.”