Sex-For-Job: How UNIBEN Lecturer Grabbed My Breasts In His Office — Female Ex-Student (Exclusive)

 

Indecent dressing

“I had gone to check my result in his office with my friend, a girl too. He asked for our matriculation numbers and showed us our grades. My friend and I had both scored ‘B’.

“The man said he was very happy that we did well in the course and engaged us in a little conversation.

“However, I noticed he particularly picked interest in me and asked me, if I would be interested in working as an assistant in his office before the release of our National Youth Service Corps(NYSC) posting letter…

A female ex-student of the University of Benin who does not want her name in print, narrates her shocking experience in the hands of a lecturer who offered her a job, and sexually assaulted her some minutes after.

When a woman is sexually harassed or assaulted, oftentimes the victims are always the first to be blamed. Questions like; what were you wearing, why did you go there, did you go there alone and lots more, are hauled at them without any thought, and sometimes, no outrage at the perpetrator, who took advantage of someone else.

A recent documentary by BBC Africa Eye on sexual harassment perpetrated by lecturers in some West African universities — the University of Lagos and the University of Ghana — brought to the fore, what most people already know but have waved off, as one of those things that happen in every tertiary institution across the region.

Some Nigerians and Ghanaians dismissed the crime of the guilty lecturers, shifting the blame to the students because, according to them, “most female students go to their lecturers with the sole aim to seduce them and get good grades in return.”

A professor from one of the federal universities in Nigeria attributed indecent dressing as one of the reasons why many female students are harassed by lecturers or university staffs who are supposed to guide them.

A lecturer who spoke on a radio station described it as a situation where some female students deliberately go into these tertiary institutions with the main goal of acquiring ‘sexually transmitted degrees”.

Professor Okwechime Emmanuel of the University of Benin (UNIBEN) in a radio interview on Nigeria Info FM 99.3, while reacting to the trending BBC Africa Eye documentary video said, “First and foremost, the ancient hyping of sexual corruption [Sex for Grade] is just want of BC’s (Broadcasters) and people not being serious. Sexual harassment is being seen from one angle.

“Is it not possible that even the lecturers are being [sensually] harassed by the girls by the way they dress?

“Essentially you will see girls who are half nude come to class who want to obtain what we call STD sexually transmitted degrees”.

“They want to get their degree by sexual intercourse, and when you as a lecturer refuse to oblige them, they go and blackmail you.

“How do you reconcile that a girl comes to your office in a very transparent dress with their breast shooting out almost seeing what is inside.

“In the end, you discover that you trust otherwise to do their bidding.”

Many have argued that not all men can resist seeing something as minor as a woman’s uncovered shoulders or thighs without losing their self-control and throwing caution to the wind; just to have a taste of what their eyes have already fed on.

Whether they are their lecturers, pastors, bosses in the office, business partners or any man in certain authorities, to these people who argue vehemently for this school of thought, what a woman wears plays a huge role in determining whether she is harassed sexually or not.

With this argument already taking a good lead, in countering the plight of those sexually assaulted or harassed, Information Nigeria decided to explore the relationship between sexual harassment and indecent dressing.

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A popular Nigerian twitter user took to the platform to debunk any ties between indecent dressing and sexual harassment. According to Onye Nkuzi, lecturers abroad are faced daily with students who wear skimpy outfits especially during summertime and he has always wondered how those lecturers often restrain themselves.

A female ex-student of the University of Benin, spoke anonymously to Information Nigeria, on her experience with a senior lecturer of the institution, in the weeks after they had written their last paper.

“I had gone to check my result in his office with my friend, a girl too. He asked for our matriculation numbers and showed us our grades. My friend and I had both scored ‘B’.

“The man said he was very happy that we did well in the course and engaged us in a little conversation.

“However, I noticed he particularly picked interest in me and asked me, if I would be interested in working as an assistant in his office before the release of our National Youth Service Corps(NYSC) posting letter.

“To say I was elated was, to say the least. I immediately agreed, and I could see the envy in my friend’s eyes. In a minute, I imagined how this little beginning would land me into becoming a graduate assistant and the very beginning to a blissful lecturing career.

“Who said there’s no God, I wondered to myself. My hard work would finally pay off. All those all night reading to make a 2-1(Second Class Upper), didn’t go to waste after all.

“You would start immediately, he said.

“With this, my friend and I talked briefly outside his office, she congratulated me on my new job and off she went.

“I went back into the lecturer’s office, he brought out some examination booklets of some part-time students of the school, which he had already marked and asked me to record their scores in a register which already had their names.

“I started on my first task with all the seriousness in the world and I was so engrossed in it, that I almost thought I was dreaming when I felt very strong hands on my two breasts.

“First, I couldn’t register what had just happened, I couldn’t move, I could breathe, I was lost for words and action.

“I felt totally sad and disappointed. This was a man I spent the last four years admiring, a man old enough to be my father. I particularly chose his course in the second-semester final year because I admired and respected him so much.

“I looked up at him and he laughed devilishly, then took his hands off me. I felt so much disgust and at that instant all the respect I had for him vanished. I thank God, I have graduated and nothing would ever bring me and the pervert under one roof again.

“So I played cool, showed no anger and continued recording the scores. So he started asking me if I live in Benin or one of those students that came from neighbouring States; What my parents did and other irrelevant questions. I answered calmly and waited patiently for when he would say it’s closing hour.

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When it was 5:00 pm, he asked me to take my leave and gave me N500 for transport. I didn’t accept the money even though he insisted because I said I lived to inside Ekosodin and my house is just walking distance to school.

He then asked me to come early the next day. Of course, I knew I wasn’t going back there.

Then he called me at 9:00 am the next day and asked why I hadn’t resumed yet. I told him, I got an emergency call from my mom, most after I left his office to start coming to Lagos that she was travelling to Dubai to get goods for her shop since I have already finished my exams.

I could feel his disappointment but he obliged and never called me again.

Asked her if she was indecently dressed, and her response was “No.

“I was wearing a sleeve top on a jean. In fact, I had no makeup on as I never wore any during my university days. ”

According to her, whenever she remembers the incident, she still shudders.

This is just one of the many experiences that many female students face whether in the university, workplace or elsewhere, where they have to face randy men in a position of authority.

Whether indecently dressed or not, some men have made up their mind to harass any woman over whom they have authority over, or whom they already perceive to be vulnerable.

Following the release of the documentary by BBC Africa Eye, a hot debate ensued on social media with many debunking the relationship between indecent dressing and sexual harassment.