Students across Nigerian tertiary institutions, in partnership with Gender Mobile Initiative (GMI), have donated their pens to President Ahmed Bola Tinubu while soliciting him to speedily assent to the Anti-Sexual Harassment Bill before him.
The students gathered the pens from across different campuses and presented them to the president through his Senior Special Assistant on Students Engagement, Sunday Asefon, on Friday in Abuja, in attribution to shortage of pens as a likely factor for the delay in assenting to the bill.
One of the students, Abdul Fatima Zara of the University of Abuja said, “The most symbolic tool for students are pens, and that is why we have donated these pens to the president.”
The lead director of GMI, a non-governmental organisation that works to address sexual and gender-based violence in educational settings, Omowumi Ogunrotimi, said they partnered with Nigerian students to launch the “#DonateAPenToMrPresident Campaign,” across campuses nationwide intending to contribute pens, urging Mr President to sign the bill promptly, thereby safeguarding students in educational institutions.
Reacting, the presidential aide, Asefon, admitted that the case of sexual harassment had been persistent in the citadel of learning and that the bill would address such and ensure that the right punishment was meted to the perpetrators
