Sexual Harassment in Tertiary Educational Institutions in Nigeria: The Developing Law and Practice

Sexual harassment has become one of the virulent scourges in Nigeria’s tertiary educational institutions. Its prevalence and gravity are second only to cultism, while its endemic proportion is underscored by certain impunity on the part of perpetrators, and hopelessness, on the part of victims. The situation stemmed from the apparent lack of regulations and law against sexual harassment in Nigeria, and particularly in its tertiary educational institutions. Whatever remedies one might have hoped for, could only possibly be gleaned from the Criminal and Penal Codes of Nigeria, and to a more limited extent, the Nigerian laws of tort, labour, and the constitutional law. The problem is that no specific crime of tort of sexual harassment existed. Whatever laws that could be invoked to redress sexual harassment in tertiary educational institutions could only be tangential and definitionally inadequate. Therein lies the importance of the passage of the “Bill For An Act to Prevent, Prohibit and Redress Sexual Harassment of Students in Tertiary Educational Institutions and for Matters Concerned Therewith, 2020”. Notwithstanding that the bill is yet to be assented to by the President, the developing law and practice on its subject matter has begun to evolve as shown by the rise in the number of cases that has been decided on sexual harassment in tertiary educational institutions in Nigeria, in recent times. To further enhance the developing law, not only will the President’s assent to the Bill be imperative, lessons must be learnt from precedents from foreign jurisdictions. The following recommendations are therefore desirable: 1) that the Bill be reviewed and re-presented to the current President of Nigeria for assent; 2) that the Bill be reviewed to require the tertiary educational institutions to adopt policies on sexual harassment, in addition to requiring them to establish Committees on Sexual Harassment; 3) that the scope of the Bill be widened to include primary and secondary schools, work places and religious organizations in order to holistically deal with the subject matter of sexual harassment in the country.