A video that went viral showing female students being caressed to see if they were wearing bras before an exam has caused a lot of anger at a university in Nigeria.
In the video, female staff at Olabisi Onabanjo University in Ogun State, in the southwestern part of Nigeria, can be seen stroking the chests of some students while they wait in queue to take a test.
The university hasn’t said anything about the video yet, but a student leader said that the bra policy is part of the school’s dress code to keep the environment “distraction-free.”
He did say, though, that the policy needed to be enforced in other ways, as critics have called it outdated, sexist, and similar to sexual assault.
A high-ranking member of the campaign group Human Rights Network told the BBC that students might sue the university for violating their rights.
“Touching someone else’s body without their permission is against the law and could lead to legal action.” Haruna Ayagi said, “The university is wrong to use this method to stop people from dressing inappropriately.”
A student who didn’t want to be named told the BBC that the university had a stringent moral code even though it wasn’t a religious school.
She added that their outfits were always being looked at.
Muizz Olatunji, the president of the university’s students’ union, said on X that the university had a “dress-code policy aimed at maintaining a respectful and distraction-free environment, encouraging students to dress modestly and in line with the institution’s values.”
He went on to say that the policy wasn’t new and that the union had “worked with the institution to find other ways to deal with inappropriate clothing, focussing on respectful and dignified interactions between students and staff.”
He also wrote the dress code, which said that students couldn’t wear clothes that would make people of the same or opposite sex want to have sex with them in an inappropriate way.
When Olabisi Onabanjo was governor of Ogun State, the university was created in 1982 as Ogun State University. In 2001, it was given his name.
