Issues bordering the prey on students by lewd lecturers

It is in situations like this that one begins to wonder whether there
is any hope for morality in our country. I am talking about such cases
where we see perversion in a place it should have no business
manifesting. Where the debasement of decency takes root in a place
that should instill same; quash that thought, this is not about the
churches.

We were last Tuesday returned to our institutions of higher learning.
We were so conveyed back by the action of students from the Creative
Arts department of the University of Lagos who embarked on a protest
march against the excesses of their randy lecturers.

If they say 'excesses', then excesses is really the word. We all know
that before students of nowadays can get themselves to carry out a
protest, the situation must have really got out of hand. It is no
longer like the students activist days of Labaran Maku and company
where a little infraction against students and their activities is
attended by a fierce aluta continua.

The Unilag students in their hundreds, armed with placards bearing
messages hinting at the lasciviousness of the lecturers, alleged
sexual harassment and other allegations of misconduct against their
lecturers. The students told that lecturers in their department have
made life difficult for them by making sex with them a major criterion
for passing examinations.

They also alleged that male students who obviously cannot offer sexual
favours to their lecturers were made to part with exorbitant sums of
money, in place of sex, if they wanted to pass their exams. This, we
called 'sorting' during our days in school, I wonder what it was
nicknamed in yours. The money paid by the male students form part of
what the lecturers use to finance their adulterous lifestyle.

That rings a bell, doesn't it? That was how they took us back. Those
who graduated from school in the recent past will by this, have their
minds cast back on how it was during their times in school. This issue
has always been there. It won't be wrong to surmise that the ill
tradition was handed down to today's crop of lecturers by the ones who
had retired or are probably dead. How? Today's lecturers were
yesterday's students who watched them do it glaringly.

This vice accounted for a major reason cultism and cultists reigned supreme.
The reduction in incidences of cultism in our tertiary schools,is
attributable to lecturers learning how to manage their libido. Hence
the students' unwillingness to be members of cults since they have no
lecturers to scare away from their valentines.

It then appears that raunchy lecturers are taking advantage of the
lull in cult activities to go after girls arbitrarily. During the
heydays of cultism in schools, lecturers focussed their research
efforts on finding out which female student is dated by a cultist so
as to back off. I hope lecturers who are demanding sex from students
are not trying to buoy cultism?

Talking of research from our academia, we may have chanced into the
reason behind our not seeing much of their research efforts to address
the pervasive and overwhelming problems plaguing our society. Their
self-inflicted distraction, occasioned by the lust for female
students, is apparently responsible for this.

For it is impracticable for a man who maintains a lustful way of life
to successfully conclude a serious research effort. Having a harem of
courtesans distracts men from their goals just like King Solomon was
turned away from his devotion to God who so blessed him with wisdom.

The chronic womaniser of a lecturer apparently has a wife with
children who may still be teens. He will be so calculating on how he
goes about his philandering such that his family will not be in the
know. Besides, he will equally contend with how to assuage or deal
with a mistress who wants to blow the lead off his extra-marital
activities, just like we read in the news some 48 hours after the
Unilag protest.

It was reported of the personal secretary to a professor at the Delta
State University who demanded N100,000 from her 'professor lover' as
settlement for his having an amorous relationship with her or be ready
to face public scandal. These are distractions amidst which no real
research result can be achieved.

And what is an academic without an impacting research to his credit.
Now you can better appreciate why our universities are always at the
lower rungs of world universities rankings.

This article has seen me lump all lecturers together even though I
know there are female lecturers (who knows if there are gay female
lecturers harassing females students or female lecturers pestering
male students as well?).

My sweeping postulations are well intended. This is owing to the fact
that those who are innocent of pestering students for sex know what
their colleagues are doing yet they elected to look the other way.
What stops them from giving the left leg of fellowship to the bad eggs
among them?

Some of these comrade of theirs even dare their victims to go and
report and see for themselves that nothing will come out of it. It is
to the extent that even junior lectures dare their prey to report them
to the Senate- a congregation of professors in a university. And
truly, students who thought such a bluff soon learnt it wasn't. You
can now see the complicity.

Moreover, an Igbo adage holds that when a finger is dipped into oil,
it soils the rest fingers. Lecturers can't have reprobates among them
and expects to be without blame. The blame is already there by the
existence of black sheep in their midst.

I remember the case of a friend of mine who refused to marry a
lecturer who was seriously seeking her hand in marriage because she
had come to believe that all lecturers are casanovas and that she
wouldn't want to share her husband with students. That is how such a
respected profession has been demystified by lecturers who can't just
be contented with the wife they have at home.

This should make the Academic Staff Union of Universities(ASUU) rise
to the occasion by riding our varsities of this menace that shouldn't
be heard of it. If there is sincerity of purpose on their part, ASUU
and other relevant authorities have all it takes to rein in these
sexually immoral lecturers. This does not exonerate those in
polytechnics and colleges of education, parallel bodies in these
schools of higher learning should equally seek out and punish the
erring lecturers.

Some of them are so dubious that they are only attracted to female
students they suspect to be virgins. They identify these ones through
their pattern of dressing and demeanor. This is one of the reasons I
am not always fascinated by the argument that the kind of dresses
female students put on are responsible for the passes they are getting
from the lecturers.

Meanwhile, since the popular position is that the manner in which
female students dress is what is turning weak lecturers on, students
would be well advised to dress properly while on campus. After all,
some higher institutions are already adopting a code of dressing for
their students.

Relevant stakeholders must work to end this aberration that has gained
ground in our higher institutions. Parents who, through brawn and
toil, saw their wards through tertiary institutions, should not be
rewarded by making their hitherto HIV-negative daughters turn
HIV-positive at the end of the day because of some licentious
lecturers.

Correction in educational institutions is such that each of primary,
secondary and tertiary schools have a role to play in inculcating
discipline on a person. Tertiary institutions should not be made a
weak link in this circle. They shouldn't ruin the good works that have
already been done on their students by primary and secondary schools.
Oh, I forgot that a proprietor was recently caught defilling an
11-year old pupil in a toilet. Hmm, whither morality in this country?

Ugochukwu Ugwuanyi,
Editor-in-Chief,
wazobiapost.com
[email protected]
@ugsylvester