Geoffrey Anyanwu, Enugu
Irked by the spate of Sexual Gender-Based Violence (SGBV) in Nigerian universities, the Amnesty International Nigeria at the weekend launched a human rights clinic at the University of Nigeria, Enugu Campus (UNEC) to fight the scourge.
Describing SGBV as cankerworm that had eaten deep into the fabrics of universities, the Human Rights Education Coordinator at Amnesty International Nigeria, Marsha Nwanne-Umeh disclosed that the clinic would be established in other universities in the country.
Nwanne-Umeh who spoke during the formal induction of 50 Clinicians made up of male and female Law students into the Clinic, noted that it was a product of a project that was centered on the empowerment of youths to fight SGBV in Nigerian universities.
The project she also disclosed was being sponsored by Civil Society in Development (CISU) Denmark, in collaboration with Amnesty International Denmark and Amnesty International Nigeria.
Explaining how the human rights clinic was establishment she said, “We started off with an inception meeting which we invited stakeholders; we invited International Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDA), the Dean of Law faculty University of Nigeria, we invited a lot of lecturers, we invited Women’s Aid Collective (WACOL) and Access Africa. We all sat down and deliberated on this initiative, and how it will help eliminate or reduce sexual gender-based violence in the University community. Afterwards, we then had a three-day comprehensive training; it was very extensive on how to run a human rights clinic. It is something that I hope every other University would encompass and input into their system.”
She therefore, called on universities to adopt the project and produce a working document on sexual harassment policy in their respective universities, warning that “sexual gender-based violence is a serious worm eating through the fiber of the university.
“You have students raping students. You have lecturers exploiting students and considered for a grade and even we have students trying to seduce lecturers for grade. This has been happening and it has become almost a culture.
“In the training, a lot of students opened up and said this is what they were going through. Some of them were very emotional, they cried, they left the training and still came back; and we have resolved that is a fight that we’re not going to relent on. We will come together and we will keep fighting until sanity is restored in our universities.
“It cannot be an accepted culture that these evil things happen. We are going to empower the human right clinicians to actually get funds, we are going to help them as Amnesty International and look for donors especially the Civil Society in Development if this actually goes well. And beside we are hoping that the school will take over as part of effort to sustain the initiative.”
The Head, Department of Law, Dr Sam Nwatu, in his remarks commended Amnesty International for partnering with the University to fight SGBV scourge in the University, assuring them of total support.
He said, “I am happy that my Faculty is creating a working document on sexual harassment. We must do something that will eliminated Sexual Gender-Based Violence in our institutions or reduce it to the beeriest minimum. Anyone who thinks that sexual harassment is not real is joking, it is real and what goes around will surely come around.
“Is something that all of us must come together and fight. I am equally delighted that my students are being inducted today to combat sexual harassment in our University.”