The National Universities Commission (NUC) has charged
Vice-Chancellors of Nigerian Universities to publish the names of
lecturers found wanting over allegations of sexual harassment of their
students.
The Executive Secretary of NUC, Prof. Abubakar Rasheed, gave this charge at the Redeemer’s University in Ede, Osun, on Monday.
He said this in a keynote address he presented at the 33rd annual
conference of the Association of Vice-Chancellors of Nigerian
Universities (AVCNU).
The V-C said that since he took over the leadership of the NUC two
years ago, he and his team had been working on reforms to improve the
university education in the country.
He said that the reforms had been working and helping to reduce the ratio of corruption in the university system.
Rasheed, however, said that the major challenge at the moment had
been allegations of sexual harassment by lecturers against their
students.
“Our major crisis now is sexual harassment.Whether we like it or not,
I want to charge the AVCNU at this meeting to make it a priority in the
communique, to take a decisive action on this challenge.
“The universities should be willing to punish and stamp out the
incidences of sexual harassment, because it is damaging to our
collective reputation; and we just have to do something.
“Please say it and do it; and whenever you punish or sanction somebody in this regard, let your effort be duly publicised.
“Let the world know that somebody has lost his or her job because of
sexual harassment or somebody has been demoted from being a Professor to
Lecturer1 because of sexually harassing a student.
“We, in the NUC, will be helping you.We can be collecting the names
of the offenders monthly and advertising in all the newspapers to expose
them as culprits of sexual harassment, because we are determine to
fight them.
“This is one area of academic corruption we are fighting.
“If lecturers that were told not to take advantage of innocent girls
and boys in the universities decide to do so because they have the power
to award marks, then we will equally fight them,” he said.