[size=14pt]NIGERIA: President orders probe into campus violation[/size]
Tunde Fatunde
30 September 2011
Issue: 191

Nigerian president Goodluck Jonathan has ordered a police investigation into an incident at Abia State University in which five students allegedly violated a female colleague, filmed the SinParty and posted it on the internet, sparking outrage across the country and abroad.

Information and communication technologies coupled with a new freedom of information act assisted in revealing that there have been many unreported cases of violation at universities.

Linda Ikeji, a graduate and journalist, posted a video of the incident on her popular blog. The news broke within minutes. French television station France 24 aired it, prompting angry reactions on its Facebook page, and human rights and civil society organisations unanimously condemned such debasement of womanhood.

Nigerians locally and in the diaspora, especially students and academics, sent messages of condemnation to the president via Facebook, demanding that the rapists be punished.

Jonathan ordered the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) to step into the matter, and it conducted an enquiry. According to reliable sources, the commission confirmed the identities of the men and the student they violated.

The enraged president handed over the NHRC findings to Caleb Olubolade, Police Affairs Minister, and instructed him to further investigate the sordid affair and prosecute the offenders. Jonathan had to take this action because local authorities were reportedly unenthusiastic about getting to the root of the matter.

Abia State University Vice-chancellor Chibuzo Ogbuagu said a preliminary investigation by the institution found that no violation had taken place on the campus in Uturu, in southeast Nigeria, and that no students had been involved in violation. But he said he would cooperate with security agencies willing to look further into the matter.

Former student activist Carol Ajie, of the non-governmental organisation Leadership and Advocacy for Women in Africa, disagreed with the vice-chancellor's findings. In an article she disclosed the names and other identities of the five students and called on the police make use of documents at her disposal as credible evidence that may assist in the investigation.

She appealed to the university authorities to provide medical attention to the female student, who is reportedly in hiding and could be suffering serious injuries. Ajie said that the video indicated the students did not use condoms, and so the student also risked HIV infection.

"There is no hiding place anymore, for the police. The entire university community at home and elsewhere are watching how the police handle this matter," Ajie wrote.

She said greater access to information through the internet, Nigeria's freedom of information act and heated debates over the alleged violation involving former head of the International Monetary Fund Dominic Strauss-Kahn, had made it impossible for the authorities to sweep such incidents under the carpet and had emboldened Nigerians to insist on an investigation.

University authorities and agencies in Nigeria have been alarmed by a well researched article published in the national tabloid The Punch by Segun Olugbile, who described horrific cases of female students being sexually abused and the culprits escaping unpunished.

He claimed that male rapists are "admired" by their peers as heroes while the victims are objects of ridicule and disdain. The article reminds one of the historical novel Monne, Outrages et Defis by Francophone author Ahmadou Kouroma, which showed intimate abuse of women being perceived as "divinely ordained", normal and expected in a man's world.

In a sober article also in The Punch, Abimbola Adelakun wrote that she was not happy about the indifference over the alleged violation displayed by Abia State Governor Theodore Orji. Drawing on the dialectical theory propounded by Paulo Freire in his book Pedagogy of the Oppressed, she opined that man is as much a victim of a despoiler as a woman.

The difference was how directly each was affected. "Fighting violation should therefore not be women affairs alone because we do not know whose daughter will be the next to have her body violated and posted on the internet," she wrote.

http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20110930120746139