Found this eye opening, chilling report in Punch Newspaper, read below:
Bimbo Coker’s (not real name) first day on campus in October 2008 was full of apprehension.
It was expected.
As a 15-year-old who had spent all her
primary and secondary school education at private schools in Osun State,
she had never left the sight of her parents, not even for a day. All
through her primary and secondary schooldays, she was known to be a
quiet, obedient “mum’s girl.”
In the church on Sundays, she sat where
her parents sat, and left for home when service was over. No time to
play with friends after the grace was said. During the holidays and
weekends, her parents — both educationists — got her tutors to groom her
academically.
She is the only girl among five children.
Just about four months after sitting for
the West African Senior School Certificate Examination with 1,369,141
others and making distinctions and credits in all nine subjects she sat
for, she gained admission to study Biochemistry at Ladoke Akintola
University of Technology, Ogbomoso, Oyo State, Nigeria.
Since her mum’s friend’s daughter, who
was 10 years older than her, was a final year student of Agricultural
Economics and Extension at the same university, her parents did not
bother seeing her off to the school. After all, she was going to be an
adult someday and sort out things on her own, they thought, perhaps.
After some pep talk on the day she was
travelling to Ogbomoso, her parents let their ‘little bird’ fly. It
would be her first experience outside home.
“Ordinarily, they never left me on my
own for the first 14 years of my life. My parents were always there for
me,” she told our correspondent in December 2015 at a church-organised
seminar in Lagos city, where she now works as a customer care officer at
a telecommunications firm.
But on this particular night, they were not there for her.
Her mum’s friend’s daughter — who she
called her “school mum” — was, however, too busy with her final year
project that she had no time for her to put her through the school
system as the one-week orientation for freshers was not enough for her
to grasp how the university system works.
“Eventually, I had to be on my own. I
had to start acting like a lady and not a girl anymore, so I felt I
should stop disturbing her. She was busy with her project and I couldn’t
be the reason why she wouldn’t be able to concentrate,” Coker said.
“But I still needed help. I had never been in a wide system like that
before. Some things were confusing. I was able to meet with other
freshers like me, and so we helped one another.”
Days flew by and registration period was about ending.
It was during one of the days she had to
fill the course form and submit to the department that she met a
400-Level tall dark coursemate, Wale (not his real name), “who appeared
to be a God-sent angel. He helped me out on almost everything,” she
recalled.
From assistance, to resistance, then force
Coker told Saturday PUNCH that
though she was embittered, she had decided to let go of what happened
between Wale and her — for the sake of her own inner peace.
She narrated, “We soon became good
friends. Though he was 14 years older than me, I was not bothered. He
was like a big brother to me in school. I grew up among boys, so I felt
comfortable with him. He would help me out on anything — how to approach
lecturers, how to choose which course to offer when it came to
selective ones, and so on. He was very friendly with me. Moreover, we
attended the same campus fellowship and he played drums.
“He would help me with some assignments.
Yeah, He is brilliant and read a lot then. It was even his seriousness
that attracted him to me in the first place. I love a serious guy and
meeting him that day and discussing with him afterwards, I couldn’t help
but become his friend.
“There was a time I felt that I should
caution myself because the closeness was getting too much. He noticed my
behaviour and asked me why I was getting scared of him. Of course, I
was a virgin then and I ought to. However, he told me he had a
girlfriend, a then-300-Level Food Science and Engineering student. That
put my mind at rest a bit. At least he wouldn’t betray the trust of the
other lady, I assumed.”
Then the night came.
In January 2009, after resuming from the
Christmas and New Year holidays, he was the first person to say hello
to her at her hostel in the Adenike Area of the school.
“He was calling me almost every day
during the holidays, asking me when I would resume. He said he would be
excited to see me again in the new year and asked what I was going to
bring for him while coming. My mum used to sell provisions apart from
teaching, so I told him I was going to bring some for him. He was
thankful. Due to his much perseverance and because I wanted to resume
early too so I could start preparing for exams, I got back to school in
the first week of January,” Coker said, resting her arms on a shiny
mahogany table in the church office where she shared her story.
During the first week of resumption in
most tertiary institutions, only a few students usually get back to
school as most wait till the second or third week, observations have
shown.
No serious academic activity takes place
during this period, except for pleasantries, gists and discussions
among hostel and coursemates who resume early.
It was around 7pm when she heard the knock that day.
Coker said, “I didn’t think he was
coming again because he had promised to come and see me by 1pm. Only
about three of us had resumed in my hostel and the two others were not
around. When I heard the knock, I thought they were my hostel mates who
had also promised to come and visit me.
“I opened the door only to see Mr. Wale,
flashing his teeth in the dark. We greeted and he entered. He
apologised for coming late and I gave him what I brought for him. He
said he was grateful and gave me a hug.”
The hug was the genesis of the incident that took place thereafter.
Coker said, “He didn’t leave me
afterwards and I was like, ‘What’s going on?’ Before I knew it, he had
started touching my body, my breasts and buttocks. I removed his hands,
but he resisted. I resisted too and before I could say anything again,
he got me into bed. I said ‘no’, but he wasn’t listening again. He raped
me.
“After that night, I regret ever knowing
him. He deflowered me and I felt like killing him. I saw him once after
the incident, before he left for internship, and he tried so well to
avoid me. When he was back, he was in 500-Level while I had got to
200-Level, he greeted me once and the second time we met at a
departmental function, he called me aside and apologised.”
Our correspondent asked whether she
reported the incident to the school authorities, but Coker said she was
too afraid to do that as a fresher.
“One, I didn’t know who to report to or
who would help me. Two, I didn’t want anybody, including my parents, to
know about it. It just had to stay with me. He left me that night in
sorrow, piercing my heart, but I asked God to avenge for me,” she said.
Six years after the incident, our correspondent asked Coker whether she had moved on.
“He called me sometime ago and
apologised for what happened that night. I could hear him weeping at the
other end of the phone. He said it was the devil’s work and that he was
overwhelmed that night. He said the devil got hold of him and that he
had never been himself again thereafter. He said he had no peace and
wanted my forgiveness. He pleaded with me. Well, I forgave him and at
least my heart had been free from it ever since. However, the experience
has made me never to trust any man again. I can’t be in a secluded
place with only you, for instance,” she told our correspondent.
Coker agreed her story be published to
make female freshers in tertiary institutions learn from her and to
appeal to the Federal Government to enforce laws against rape, which had
become “the sons of the devil’s hobby.” She also didn’t object to her
picture being used in this story if blurred.
Citadels of learning turning to rapists’ dens
Coker’s story wouldn’t be the first of
its kind to take place in a Nigerian tertiary institution — it’s only
that she was bold to share hers.
The term “October rush” is a slogan used
for the chasing of female freshers by senior male students in tertiary
institutions in the country.
Most institutions in Nigeria resume
academic activities for the first semester in October of every year,
except where striking actions or other factors have disrupted the
academic calendar year.
“October rush” is a phenomenon,
according to guys who know very much about it, whereby senior male
students anticipate to make new female friends, then finding one to make
a girlfriend — for a year or two.
A 2009 graduate of the University of
Lagos, who asked not to be named, said, “Most guys anticipate October
rush every year. You get to know new babes who don’t know anything or
much about the school system yet. You meet them at departmental
orientation programmes, hostels, and the likes. They flood everywhere,
and from the way they look, you’ll know they’re really fresh.
“They’ve not been battered by the stress
of exam or lectures; they know nothing. Guys offer to help them out in
doing certain things like registration and become friends in the
process. I had a girlfriend too who was a fresher at a point in time,
but I never forced anything on her. She calls me occasionally up till
now because we are still friends. If I had hurt her then, she would
never be doing that. Everything we did was consensual. I can’t say that
about others.”
Truly, he can’t say that about other senior male students at UNILAG and elsewhere.
When she gained admission to study
Accounting in 2010 at the Federal Polytechnic, Auchi, Edo State, and was
offered assistance on course registration, hostel accommodation, among
others, Bella didn’t know her new-found male friend was going to drug
her juice weeks after in order to sleep with her.
She thought her mum’s prayer that she
would find favour on and off-campus was the one working when she left
Uyo and travelled all the way down to Auchi to study.
“I didn’t know the ‘son of the devil’
was interested in me, really. I thought he was only helping. He was in
Higher National Diploma 1, and I had just gained admission, so I didn’t
feel awkward. I thought he was nice,” Bella, who now resides in Port
Harcourt, Rivers State, told our correspondent on the phone.
She added, “Before I did this, he would
help me; before I did that, he was there. I actually felt relieved
because if not for his guidance, it would have taken long for me to
adapt to the system, but for him, it took a short time.
“To repay his kindness, anytime he
visited me on weekends, I would cook for him and make him feel at home. I
didn’t know I was putting myself in trouble — until a day came when he
pleaded with me to come and cook the kind of food I gave him in his
hostel. It never occurred to me he had a sinister motive. I thought I
was being a good girl for accepting his plea and returning his help.
“So on a particular weekend, I visited
him and he was very happy. He said the day he had been waiting for had
finally come. I didn’t understand that statement because I thought he
was simply overwhelmed with happiness by my presence.
“Being a junior student and seeing him
as a big brother, I collected money from him to go to the market and
when I returned, he had brought out a packet of juice from his fridge.
He said he knew I would be tired and thirsty after returning from the
market to cook for him, so he poured me a cup.
“I drank the juice, not knowing that he
had injected sleeping pill into it. After some minutes, I started
feeling dizzy and weak and didn’t know when I landed on his bed. I was
no longer aware of what was happening, but I felt him undressing me. I
couldn’t move an inch. Some hours later, I woke up and knew I had been
raped. He had gone out, pretending not to be around while I was
sleeping. I ran out of his room and up till today, he never appears to
be remorseful. I pray he pays for what he did to me.”
A culture of rape
Rape occurs both on and off the campus.
Campus sexual assault is the sexual assault of a student attending an
institute of higher learning, such as a college or university, though
less than 40 per cent of reported incidents occur on campus property,
according to statistics.
Sexual assault of higher education
students occurs more frequently against women but unfortunately, many
victims completely or partially blame themselves for the assault. They
are embarrassed by the shame, and for fear of not being believed, do not
report.
As remarked in one study, “Women generally do not report their victimisation, in part because of self-blame or embarrassment.”
A Lagos-based activist who offers counselling to domestically- and sexually-abused women in Nigeria, Mrs. Modupe Bamgboye, told Saturday PUNCH that at times she wonders why men still rape girls and women “in an age when sex is cheap.”
She added, “I just don’t get it when I
hear rape cases here and there. I mean, it is overwhelming and I just
don’t understand what this society has turned to. People who want to
have sex could patronise prostitutes if they want, but they should stop
forcing girls to having sex with them.”
Rape has been a worrying issue over the
years, but little seems to have been done concerning the prosecution of
offenders, especially in developing countries like Nigeria.
When it comes to rape in tertiary
institutions, it is usually believed to be perpetuated by a lecturer to a
female student, but the landscape is changing. It’s now a matter of a
student against another student such as the case with Coker and Bella
and perhaps thousands more ladies who have never talked about their
experiences.
In 2010, some female students were raped
by some hoodlums suspected to be cult members at the Ambrose Alli
University, Ekpoma, Edo State.
The following year, a video clip emerged
on the Internet where a female student of the Abia State University,
Uturu, Abia State was gang-raped by five guys for about one hour.
Recently, some female students at
LAUTECH staged a protest against rape by their male counterparts, after
being tired of forbearance. It was a walk deemed fit, perhaps.
As it is on Nigerian campuses, so it is also in the developed climes.
In a 16-year-old girl’s account of a
rite called the “senior salute” at St. Paul’s Boarding School in New
Hampshire, United States, she narrated how the event eventually turned
into rape.
The “senior salute” is a period when older students ask younger ones to join them for a walk, a kiss, or more.
The girl was 15 and a freshman at the
time and had agreed to follow a senior suitor, Owen Labrie, 18, to the
roof of a campus building to which he had a key, according to a New York Times report.
When they kissed, she did not object.
But soon, he began to grope her; he bit her chest too, she said, and
tried more than once to remove her underwear.
“I said, ‘No, no, no, keep it up here,’ ” said the girl. “I tried to be as polite as possible.”
The incident ended up in rape, but the
guy in question was convicted by the court — perhaps the difference
between rape cases in Nigeria and a developed country.
For instance, a human rights lawyer,
Evans Ufeli, who has been handling cases of rape for over 10 years,
stated recently in a report that Nigeria had only recorded 18 rape
convictions in its legal history.
This is perhaps worrisome as in Lagos alone, in 2014, about 200 rape cases were recorded.
Laws, actions against rape
Rape is a crime under the criminal and
penal code in Nigeria. Sexual harassment, sexual assault and rape is a
clear violation of Article 3 (4) of the protocol to the African Charter
on Human and Peoples rights on the Rights of Women in Africa (2003),
Article 2 (d) of The Convention on Elimination of all forms of
Discrimination Against Women 1979 and Section 24 of the Violence Against
Person Prohibition Act 2014.
In his research on Sexual Harassment and Psychological Consequence among Students in Higher Education Institutions in Nigeria,
Taiwo Omole of the Centre for Gender and Social Policy Studies, Obafemi
Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Osun State, highlighted a number of
factors as motivation for perpetuation of sexual harassment to include:
lust, pursuit of happiness, lack of norm of morality, lack of
conscience, etc.
He said, among others, “In view of the
above, higher education institutions in Nigeria need to develop a
sustainable system of redress for this act of indiscipline. The
authorities need to develop and mainstream anti-sexual harassment
policies into the system of operation.”
Likewise, a group called the Nigerian
Feminist Forum has called on the governing bodies of tertiary
institutions to put the following in place to checkmate the incidence of
rape: “They should immediately adopt policies and measures to address
the issue of sexual violation of female university students by fellow
students and members of staff; operationalise a comprehensive policy on
eradicating sexual harassment on campus; put in place a victim’s
response mechanism for reporting, investigating and prosecution of
perpetrators of sexual violence against female students; and conduct a
mass sensitisation on sexual violence across all campuses in Nigeria.”
The body also proposed supporting
victims to report cases of sexual harassment and abuse and ensuring the
full prosecution of perpetrators of sexual crimes against women.
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