Sexual Predators Liable To 14-Year Jail Term, New Law Before Senate

A new law to criminalise sexual harassment and rape in the tertiary institutions in the country has passed the second reading on the floor of the Senate and has prescribed a 14-year jail term for offenders.

The bill, being sponsored by the Senate deputy president Ovie Omo-Agege, is entitled "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.”
According to a statement by the media office of the President of the Senate, Ahmed Lawan, the bill has 27 clauses.
The bill proposes up to 14 years jail term, with a minimum of 5 years, without an option of fine for any educator who commits sexual offences in tertiary institutions.
The bill defines sexual offences as including 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, while leading debate on the bill, said “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.”
According to him, sexual harassment must be defined in tertiary educational institutions as statutory rape with strict liability for offenders to be prosecuted easily.
On the suggestion for the extension of the bill to primary, secondary schools, worship centres and workplaces, Omo-Agege said doing so will not be necessary because the Criminal and Penal codes already adequately deals with these categories with sufficient clarity.
He, however, stressed that the bill prescribes expulsion for students who falsely accuse educators of sexual harassment.
“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.”