Curbing indecent dressing on Nigerian campuses

Sulaimon Olanrewaju and Opeyemi Dibua

Two of the students arrested for dressing
provocatively.On most of the campuses in the country, the story is the same. Almost a half of the students go about half naked. This is not just a matter of girls generously showing parts of their busts and bums; it also involves boys who go about showing their under- wear as they sag, a term used to describe the act of allowing trousers or skirts to drop to reveal the underwear. It looks as if the students are in a competition to see the most daring person who can bare it all. At any point you think you have seen the most bizarre exposure, you are bound to see a worse one.

The issue has become such an embarrassment that school authorities have been forced to come up with a strategy to discourage students from walking naked on campuses.

Schools, such as the University of Ilorin (UNLORIN),  Bayero University, Kano (BUK), University of Maiduguri (UNIMAID), Enugu State University (ESUT), Olabisi Onabanjo University (OOU), Federal University of Technology, Akure (FUTA), University of Ado Ekiti (UNAD) and the University of Lagos (UNILAG), are among the growing number of tertiary institutions that have clamped down on the wearing of provocative clothes on campus. While other institutions are still vacillating, University of Ilorin has already taken the bull by the horn to arrest the menace.

The situation is so bad in most of the tertiary institutions, especially the public ones, that a first time visitor to any of the hostels, especially the female ones, would be pardoned if he thought he was on a visit to a red light zone.

Indeed, before the present move by the Unilorin authorities, a visitor to the school would feel violated by the obscenity paraded by these students in the name of fashion. On many of the campuses, there seems to be an alarmingly increasing population of scantily clad female students prancing seductively about. The current management of the institution considers this form of dressing inappropriate and provocative because it indecently exposes sensitive parts of the human body, which can be temptingly distracting as a result of the strong sex appeal it conjures.

Commenting on this development, a psychologist, Mr. Lanre Shobodu, described it as a yearning for attention by students who strip themselves of clothing. “It is important that we understand where these people are coming from,” said Shobodu. “Why would anyone attempt to go about half naked? The truth is that these people know that by so doing they will attract attention. Every psychologist will tell you that anything abnormal attracts attention. That is the theory these people are working on. They want to attract attention. That is why they want to be different from normal people.”

But the authorities of the University of Ilorin believes that the abnormalities of these half naked students could be a serious deterrent to serious work in an academic environment. Hence, its decision to roll out a dsress code. Under the new dress code both male and female students are forbidden from wearing all clothes which reveal sensitive parts of the body such as the bust, chest, belly, upper arms and the buttocks. Example of such dresses are given as transparent clothing, spaghetti tops, wicked straps, mono straps, show me your belly with abortion belt and waist low trousers.

Also banned are the all tight fitting clothes, including skirts, trousers and blouses as well as outfits such as knickers, miniskirts and dresses, which are not,  at least of knee length. Equally not permitted for wearing by students are T-shirt and jeans, which carry obscene messages, just as party wears, beach wears and slippers are not to be worn to lectures by students.

Speaking with our correspondent in a telephone chat on this development and how the ban will be enforced, Dean of Student Affairs Division, University of Ilorin, Prof Abdulkareem Suleiman, informed that as a first step in this direction, “lecturers have been empowered to exclude students who dress indecently from their lecture rooms.”

He did not stop there, he also stated that, “Administrators will not render services or attend to students who are indecently dressed,” adding that the ban covered the wearing of such dresses or clothes both within and outside the lecture rooms and other places within the campus.

But beyond exclusion from classes, what other sanctions await students who flout the new dress code requirements?

Professor Suleiman said: “Part of the punishment is identifying them publicly and disgracing them openly.”

Given the wide scope of the ban and the sweeping sanctions that its infringement attracts, the question may be asked whether this is not an overkill or using a sledge hammer to kill a fly.

Mrs. Kemi Adebola, member of the Provost Marshall, a security unit in the security department of the University of Ado Ekiti, (UNAD) does not think so because the problem, according to her, is serious enough to warrant whatever punishment or sanction applied to curb it.

“Let us be sincere, why should a female student reveal three quarters of her breasts and then go to a male lecturer’s officer to talk to him? And if the man touches her, then she will start shouting sexual harassment. We also attended a university and we also wore minis during our time. But it is not like what we are seeing today, where somebody wears the kind of mini that she cannot even bend down.

“You don’t follow fashion blindly and stupidly. You follow fashion if it fits you. If the fashion requires you to expose your legs and you don’t have fine legs, then please don’t expose them that can even discourage a man. If your legs are fat as yam tubers and you want to wear mini because people are wearing mini, that’s stupid. If you have a bow leg or k - leg, it does not make sense to wear mini. And that is something these students don’t know,” she said, adding that beyond the demand of fashion, the dull ones, dress provocatively to tempt or seduce their male lecturers into passing them during exams.

“I want to commend Unilorin management for the introduction of dress code. This is something other schools should think about,” she concluded. A female lecturer from Education Department, UNAD, who was also the first Student Union President of University of Ado Ekiti, Dr. Mrs Odu, described students who dress indecently as a curse to womenfolk.

Quoting from the Bible, she also said that a woman’s body is the temple of God and girl or woman who defiles her body is putting a curse on her head, adding that indecent exposure of the body was tantamount to defilement. She however thanked the Security Unit of the university for enforcing discipline in the dressing and urged the students’ union to assist the students in ensuring that they dress decently.

Some students of Unilorin who spoke with our correspondent agreed with Mrs Kemi Adebola that the problem basically could be traced to the fact that some students have become slaves to fashion that they don’t know what is decent for them to wear at any point in time.

“Yes, I think we need a dress code here. I totally support it because the way some of us dress here is really terrible that I as a girl feel embarrassed,” said Miss Bukky Ajayi, who had just completed her degree programme in law.