How the sex-for-marks phenomenon damages Nigeria (I)

The ongoing revelations about sex-for-marks at our universities would have generated a lot of dust and been overtaken by another scandal by next week. In Nigeria, it is one week, one scandal as we know.

The focus so far has been on the morality of the despicable acts on the part of lecturers in whose hands we have entrusted our children. There is also a healthy dose of firepower from the feminist angle, with high-profile people like Bisi Fayemi (first lady of Ekiti State who I have had cause to worry about her seeming dislike for men in her writings), and Ibim Smenitari (former MD of NDDC), among others revealing that they were sexually harassed in university. Myriad is what the stories are. All quite saddening. The focus is on Dr Boniface of Unilag (whom we hear tried to commit suicide), but there are hundreds, probably thousands of villains among Nigeria’s academia. It is important to say that these guys are a big drawback for Nigeria’s development in case they don’t know. This scandal again shows that we need to always look inward and consider the long-term implications of our actions and inactions. Nigerian lecturers would have been blaming the government for not being upright to its duties, but with what we have seen these past few days, the actions of many of them have been more than appalling. It is evident that our academia has not lived up to bill and is therefore really undeserving of those salary increases they crave so much. In fact, the academia needs an exorcism. More on that later.

As the scandal blew open, something different happened this time. More revelations from everywhere. People who had left school started outing lecturers who they said were leaches. In one of such, a certain Dr Bolodeoku of the same Unilag was said by one Wale Gates on Twitter of having accused one of his students in an open lecture of having infected him with a sexually transmitted disease. Gates said Unilag did nothing about it and that on another occasion when the university invited him to face a panel, he blackmailed them with knowledge of the predatory exploits of those who sat in judgement. They dropped the case like a bad habit. This same man was accused by someone else on the same twitter thread of having sworn to have sex with a married student, whose husband came to school to beg him and offer money. He was said to have refused and insisted on the sex! When I posted some of the screenshots on my Facebook page, a personal friend who graduated in the early 1990s called to tell me he had to walk into the man’s office to threaten him before he handed off his cousin in the same university.  A certain Adeyeye Olorunfemi, a 400 Level student of Unilag and student leader was expelled in 2016 for complaining of – among other things – the sexual exploitation of students. His case needs to be urgently reviewed with this revelation. We must not forget him because he is a guy. We must also not forget all boys who are financially exploited too. I pushed the envelope on my Facebook page and wondered if gay lecturers could exploit students too, and Oh My God! There were a number of affirmations that, that was presently going on in a number of universities around the country.

Many stories have made the rounds. Whole departments have been accused by people who passed through them. Stories of victimization, extortion, ruining of lives, deliberate failure of women because of refusal to ‘deal’, bribery with bags of rice, shawarma etc, even homosexual predation abound. Vice-Chancellors and DVCs have been indicted for being leeches.  It has been revealed that the academia in Nigeria does little else but indulge in illicit sex. An epidemic of sex addiction has since gripped our academia and they threw caution to the wind. What may have started subtly and cautiously soon became a free-for-all, a status symbol, and bragging rights in our country where bad habits take root quickly. I recall sitting behind a professor whose accent and name (as he spoke on the phone) showed he was from Edo State, at Abuja airport sometime back as we waited to be called to board an international flight, and he called at least 7 women – some married by the conversation they had – and was trying to lure them to come and meet him abroad. From what I heard as I sat listening in silent disgust, they were all his students. From what I have read in the last few days, almost none of our professors are clean. A respectable professor who does not coerce his students for sex would be an exception in today’s Nigeria. It is because of this that those who are caught in the act are hung to dry – for their bad luck not because the system sees their act as bad – and many who have been tried within the university setting and found guilty, have moved on to other universities. In fact, a number of guys in Nigeria’s federal legislature today were said to have been laid off due to sex scandal in the universities in which they taught! Evil reigns in our land. We reward evil and punish virtues in this country.

What are the implications of this scandal?

1. It shows that little genuine learning actually takes place in Nigeria’s higher institutions as lecturers now see their jobs as a joke, or at best as a platform to get between the legs of their innocent students – or collect money from the boys. Well, I admit that some students are the villains. Some don’t want to learn anything but the ultimate responsibility belongs to the lecturers.
2. From 1 above, it is evident that we need to saddle our higher institutions with even more duties than they presently have, given that those higher institutions retain the singular ability to transform this nation for greater developmental exploits because that is where the base of our most productive youths reside. If the energies of the students and lecturers were rechanneled, magic could happen. I have suggested in the past that students be allowed to start getting involved in real developmental projects that impact society, not after they graduate. This is how both students and lecturers will transform Nigeria and also get extra pay.
3. This problem really became commonplace in southern Nigerian universities. I wrote once about my visit to ABU Zaria and how bold the students were, compared to students in the south who I believe have been cowed through fear by their lecturers and have therefore turned to cultism en masse. ABU does have her fair share of sex scandals today and Daily Trust recently carried the news of the sack of about 19 staff for sexual indiscretions. But this problem remains an industry in the south of Nigeria, with Unilag being one of the worst places, perhaps due to the Lagos pressure for money and the hard life. Who knows? This north-south dichotomy is important so that these lecturers will know and see their contribution to the backwardness of the region that some of them will claim they love