2025 has not been easy on Nigerians. The economy has looked far from bright; the weather has been suffocating; and cost of living has been stubbornly oppressive. With rising massacres in the Middle Belt, and Borno State in the north-east apparently losing ground to the nihilism of Boko Haram terror, violence remains unremitting. In the Niger Delta, a judicially manufactured crisis of political godfathering threatens serious repercussions for the national purse and endangers rent and royalties from the wells of oil-rich Rivers State. All this unfolds under the watch of a president who appears to have grown into a habit of sending episodic missives to Nigerians from his preferred base in Paris and occasionally paying a visit to Abuja from there.

Each of these developments is eminently newsworthy. Together, they should grip attentions about the goings-on in the sixth most populous country in the world. Instead, the biggest news out of Nigeria this year is the failure of Nigeria’s men of power to manage libidinal sexploits in the workplace, and the accompanying tendency to default to abuse of power to inter any resulting embarrassments.

Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan is the Senator for Kogi Centraland, by herself, 25% of the female contingent in the Nigeria’s Senate. Her detailed allegations of sexual harassment against Senate President, Godswill Akpabio, would probably have long ago run their course if the chamber and its leadership had approached the matter with due regard to any rule book. Instead, they chose to orchestrate the longest-running political soap opera in Africa’s most populous country.

As with these things, most people no longer remember the complaint because the cover-up procured by abuse of power has been more impressive. It has guaranteed that this story has “dominated conversations and highlighted longstanding women’s rights issues in the socially conservative country, where no woman has ever been elected governor, vice-president or president.”

For many, any suggestion that it is abnormal for a man not to get excited in the presence of a woman in the workplace is perplexing to the point of vexing. In a case in 2016, a lawyer representing a powerful international organisation in a case of sexual harassment before the National Industrial Court of Nigeria (NICN), told the judge that “it is expected among adults that a man would naturally chase a woman, make romantic overtures.” Few have paused to ask what exactly “sexual harassment” means, why it matters and why it is such a lingering issue in both work spaces and public institutions.

In 2011, the Lagos State Criminal Law made sexual harassment a felony. The law describes the crime to include“unwelcome sexual advances, request for sexual favours, and other visual, verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature which when submitted to or rejected” could affect or unreasonably interfere with the employment or educational opportunities of a person; become a factor in their academic or employment decision, or create an intimidating, hostile or offensive learning or working environment. Other states like Ekiti and Kaduna States have followed the example of Lagos in making sexual harassment a crime.

Sexual harassment can also create civil liability. Stella Odey was a widow with four children when the development organization, CUSO, hired her for your years in January 2015 as project manager. At work, she found herself under a male boss who repeatedly told her that “her voice arrests him, slapping her buttocks and embracing her against her will and consent.” He was reluctant to hear her protestation that she desired to remarry.

In July 2015, 14 days after Ms. Odey gave her boss a card inviting him to her wedding, he summarily sacked her. In upholding her claim of unlawful termination, the National Industrial Court pointed out that “the main point in allegations of sexual harassment is that unwelcome sexual conduct has invaded the workplace.”

Four years earlier, the same court awarded quite substantial damages against Microsoft in Nigeria in favour of a female staff whose employment the country manager, a man, terminated after she refused his sexual advances.

While parliamentary sexploits in the Senate have broughtmuch-needed attention to the subject generally, it remains the case that Nigeria’s educational and academic institutions are the places most persistently associated with sexual harassment. Nearly 45 years ago, in 1981, a mere two years after Senator Akpoti-Uduaghan was born, the report of the Presidential Commission on Salary and Conditions of University Staff chaired by Professor Samuel Cookey acknowledged an incipient problem of sexual harassment in the universities. Since then, the issue has grown in both scope and significance.

In 2024, a pioneering Baseline Survey conducted under the auspices of the Committee of Gender Directors in Nigerian Universities in partnership with the non-governmental organization, Alliances for Africa, found that at least 63% of female students in universities in the country had experiencedsexual harassment. The perpetrators included lecturers, staff, and students. The report acknowledged an absence of progress on this issue, citing “stigmatisation, absence of adequate institutional support, power imbalances between victims and perpetrators, lack of clear policies and procedures for reporting incidents.”


https://www.vanguardngr.com/2025/04/an-anatomy-of-parliamentary-sexploits-by-chidi-anselm-odinkalu/