A new and interesting development is beginning to take shape in Nigerian universities of recent. There is a possibility that the new direction university authorities have taken arose in the wake of the BBC’s ravaging documentary on sex-for-grades scandal that rocked Nigerian and Ghanaian universities a few years ago.
At the start of school in 2023, the management of Godfrey Okoye University in Enugu State of Nigeria introduced tough new measures to buttress discipline in that institution of higher learning. When students from the university returned from the 2022/23 Christmas and New Year vacation, they were confronted with new tough measures that they least expected. The management of the University told them it had banned any form of indecent dressing among students of the institution. It had also implemented a new dress code for the staff and most especially for the students of the institution.
The Vice-Chancellor, Reverend Father Professor Christian Anieke, told members of staff and students of the university who were just returning from the Christmas and New Year holidays that the university management adopted the new measures on Tuesday, 10 January, 2023. Father Anieke made it clear that all students were to put on their faculty uniforms with the appropriate ties and shoes at all times while they were in the university premises. He said that no student should be seen putting on rugged jeans, slippers, coloured hair, long finger, face caps or artificial eyelashes.
The Vice-Chancellor expressed regret that most students and members of staff had formed the habit of wearing T-shirts with unauthorized inscriptions which, he said, violated the university’s dress code.
Rev. Fr. Professor Anieke also spoke on absenteeism from lectures and made it clear that any student who was absent in class would not be allowed to sit for examinations at the end of the semester. In a similar development, the Service Compact with All Nigerian Directorates of the University of Calabar has also banned indecent dressing among students and staff of the university with immediate effect.
The director of Servicom, Professor Patrick Egaga announced the ban in a statement issued on Friday 7 April 2023 in Calabar. He said that the directorate had noticed with grave concern the increase and proliferation of indecent, provocative and unofficial dressing, mostly by students and some female staff of the institution. Specifically, short skirts or gowns, above the knee, open backs, crop tops, braless tops and gowns, spaghetti finger, sleeveless tops, handless gowns, bikinis, see-through, transparent, apparels and revealing contours were no longer tolerated on campus.
But the professors failed short of disclosing what might likely be the punishment for any staff or student who ran afoul of the new dispensation. Also, it was not clear if the staff and students had the liberty to challenge such restrictions in the law court.
