 Thank you very much, moderator and Vice-Chancellor of the Taisho-Larine University of Education, Professor Uliyemi Siobilade. Thank you very much. The Deputy President of the Senate, Distinguished Senator Oviye Omoagege, Her Excellency the First Lady of the Kitty State, Dr. Bisi Adelae Fiami, our host, the Vice-Chancellor of Bahfemiah Olo University, Professor Iyitokwe Ogungwiro Ogungbo-Dede. The former Emmy of Canon, Israel Highness Dr. Mohamedu Samusi II, Director Ford Foundation, Mr. Inosen Chukuma, the guest speaker and chairman of the editorial board of these day newspapers, Mr. Olusebu Adini, Distinguished Panelists, Honoured Guests, Students, Ladies and Gentlemen. I think we owe a debt of gratitude to the Bahfemiah Olo University for providing the platform for this very important conversation on finding safe spaces for female students in Nigerian universities. And also, I certainly am very grateful for the kind invitation to me to make a few remarks at this webinar. I'm also grateful to my brother, Shegma Adini, who insisted also on my participation at this webinar. His book, Naked Abuse, Sex for Grades in African Universities, a research work sponsored by the Ford Foundation, is, as the Vice-Chancellor has pointed out, one of the main inspirations for this webinar. I must confess that because of the extremely readable style, and I hope that as many of us as possible have read it, because of the extremely readable style that he adopts, I was almost grateful that this research was not done by an academic like myself. All apologies to my fellow professors. We would have ended up with volumes and volumes of very difficult to read material, very difficult to figure out. But I think Shegma has in a few pages done an excellent job of not just confronting us with the key issues in this sordid, this sordid situations of sex for grades on the African continent, but has also made several important suggestions on what to do and how to solve the problem. Let me begin by saying that for me as an academic, I am always mindful of the need, I think, to begin and also as a lawyer. I am also mindful of the need to define as well as possible what the problem is. And I think that is where I would just like to start by understanding the definition of the words that we use and of course the definition of this particular problem. It was the association of women judges who very recently in a toolkit which they published quite recently described this problem as sextortion. They described this as sextortion. I think that is an important definition because it is a definition that I think clearly puts in perspective what we should be thinking about and what the elements of this are. The definition as they described it is the abuse of power to obtain a sexual favor or advantage. The abuse of power to obtain a sexual favor or advantage. Or to borrow further from them, they say that in effect sextortion is a form of corruption in which sex rather than money is the currency of the bride. A form of corruption in which sex rather than money is a currency of the bride. And I think the definition is helpful because it also helps us to shape the legal theory under which the conduct itself can be dealt with. Evidently under Nigel Andor and I think the right on the board, the distinguished deputies and the president has already covered a fair amount of the description of this offence of the Nigerian law. But I think the offence could fit into well-established categories. It of course can qualify as an act of corruption. And as Sherwin points out in his book, the successful prosecution of the professor, Professor Akundili I think it was, was done by the ICPC. And the ICPC of course as you know bases its prosecutions on definitions of corruption in the act. So what was needed to be proved and what you need to prove in such a case is that a person in a position of authority demanded gratification. And now this is a wide enough definition to cover a demand for sex in exchange for a benefit. In this case, good grades. So by definition it is an act of corruption and it could qualify easily as an act of corruption. It could also qualify as has been pointed out as rape or attempted rape. The definition of rape under our law is having sex with a woman without her consent or where the consent was obtained by threats or by intimidation of any kind, intimidation of any kind. I think that's very important here because a demand for sex with a choice of failure or success in an examination will qualify in my view as threat or intimidation. By the way, punishment for rape is life imprisonment while attempted rape is 14 years imprisonment. So even the punishment is very severe. And a more all-encompassing definition of rape and other forms of violence is contained in the Violence Against Persons Act which was referred to again by the Distinguished Senate President. Various iterations of that law is now in place in several, domesticated in several of our states. So several states have various iterations of that law. But I agree with the Deputy Senate President that there is still a need for a sexual harassment-specific bill because there are still various contours of sexual harassment that are not covered by the established definitions of corruption, for example, or rape under laws of the South or under the penal code in the North. So I think a sexual harassment-specific legislation is still one that is desirable. I believe our search for answers to creating safe spaces for female students in our universities must begin also from the question of why is it that an evidently rampant wrongdoing is so underreported? Why is it that something that is so evidently rampant? And I don't think there is any need to belabor the point. It is clearly rampant. There are obviously so many reports and so many cases of people who would share their anecdotal experiences without necessarily reporting to the authorities. I think the answer is clearly that this low reportability is on account of the fact that many do not feel confident, victims do not feel confident that they will get redressed or that they will be treated fairly or that they will not be visited with the same fearful consequences that was the subject of the demand in the first place. They fear that they will neither get a sympathetic understanding here, let alone justice, and that they will end up suffering the same consequences that the predator had threatened would occur if they did not submit to their demands. Then there is, of course, a shame and stigma that could attend speaking. So I think in ensuring that we create safe spaces, we must do at least the basics, which is providing the support and resources needed to report abusers. Every institution must make it easy for victims or potential victims to report perpetrators to trusted formal structures or secure channels created specifically for the purpose of resolving such cases. And I think it should be made very clear, everyone ought, every institution, ought to say we have this structure. It is called XYZ and it's accessible to everyone, to every student. A well thought out whistleblower process, emphasizing confidentiality and professional legal and medical help for victims or potential victims should be mandatory. I think that aside from abusers, sorry, aside from victims, whistleblowers, persons who have information, should also under a properly designed whistleblower scheme be able to advance information that they have, give information that they have. And in appropriate cases, professional legal and medical help for victims should also be provided to ensure that both faculty and students are sufficiently clear about the issues and the rules. Because I think it's important for faculty to be very clear about what the rules are and for students also to be clear about what the rules are. There's a need to devise codes of conduct or ethical guidelines based on best practices in appropriate student-lecture interactions. It's important that these are clearly defined ethical guidelines that are contained in some document that people can refer to and people can see. And I think it's important, both for the lecturer and for the student, that there is some reference to some kind of a code of conduct. And Shegun in his book notes the practice, I believe, is in Maccabreary University where as an ethical guideline, it is required that consultations between students and lecturers must be done with doors open, literally doors open. In other words, the doors cannot be physically shut while consultations are going on. And meetings between students and lecturers cannot be held outside of faculty premises. And I think that this is also important, and it's strict, but I think it's important. Meetings elsewhere would raise a presumption of wrongdoing. If someone says, I was just going to have a meeting to discuss a dissertation or not to discuss a term paper with a student and I picked a hotel as a conducive environment for that, that would obviously raise a presumption of wrongdoing. So I think that the clarity that attends these sorts of conduct and the ethical rules that must be abided by will greatly help in creating a much safer environment for female students. The other conceptual problem with offenses of this nature is where faults might be located. There's always sometimes the point that is made that victims might have brought their offense upon themselves by their attitude, by their address, or by their willingness to be in a compromising place with a lecturer. And this is one notion that must be rejected and must be resisted. The victim must always be seen as the victim. There cannot be an excuse, especially given the power configuration between students and lecturers, that the victim could have somehow invited the abuse upon themselves. I think it is an important consideration to be made and we must not allow that notion to be allowed to persist. There's also the comparison sometimes made between demanding bribes for service and sex for grades. Sometimes people would argue that a bribe is a bribe and there's no reason why the punishment for sex as the currency of the bribe, why that should be stricter or more stringent than an ordinary bribe. I think that the two are vastly different and they have vastly different impacts on the victim. Loss of cash in the payment of a bribe is vastly different in my view from the physical violation and the lingering shame and guilt and other psychological effects that the violation would visit on the victim of such a violation, especially a young person, especially a young person, a young girl. I think the psychological effects are long running and the deputy senate president had also made the point about the lingering psychological effects and this sort of devastation may never heal. So clearly offenders should be visited with the strictest possible consequences. Let me say in conclusion that we must stay engaged on these issues. Governments, civil society and we're extremely proud of the work that the deputy senate president has done on the bill and the very determined way which has continued to pursue it. I think that we must all become champions of creating safe environments for females in our universities. The easier it is to report cases, the easier it is to be heard with empathy, with assurance of redress in appropriate cases, the faster the eradication or at least reduction of this reprehensible phenomenon will be. I'd like to again thank you very much and to express again my sincere gratitude to the to the vice chancellor and the staff of the Buffalo University and to say that your university is clearly the best second only to the University of Lagos. Thank you very much.