Sex for Grades is a real problem that demands real discussions
Sex for grades or whatever sexual quid pro quo through which women across the world and sadly some men are being sexually harassed and victimised is something that is real.
The situation in Ghana is no different except maybe our attitude towards it.
The recent BBC investigative piece has heightened discussions in this area and what has become the most heart wrenching part for me is how we are already diverting our focus from the main issues.
Some people out of malice are vehemently defending lecturers who gratify their insatiable desires by preying on defenceless students.
I say it's an opportunity for the potential perpetrators and the unexposed ones to expose themselves.
Some are saying the students exert themselves on the lecturers. And I ask what prevents the lecturers from resisting them?
Others are also saying it is an attempt by the BBC and other people foreign to the African continent to put Africa in a bad light for various reasons.
These deliberate machinations is gradually and not surprisingly swaying our focus from the man issues at hand.
I believe this is how we got here in the first place through mitigation and rationalization, beginning with the overused rhetoric of "I don't support but..".
Like someone said "if you don't tell your story someone will tell it for you."
The first step towards addressing an issue is knowing and accepting that there is an issue at hand. But here we are, before we even started talking about it we had already started with justifications.
We need to tell our story and it includes knowing and understanding our issues, and applying effective and decisive solutions to them.
Because these things affect people and people will always cry for solutions internally or locally, depending on the degree to which they are affected.
"Experience has shown that when change is denied or too long delayed, violence will break out here and there, not that men planned or willed it, but that the accumulated grievances of the past erupt with volcanic fury." -Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah.
The denotation of some of the words in the statement above may not be explicit. But we have to look at them within a context.
Justice might not be the same as change and our fury today may not be violent, but one thing is clear; injustice is being perpetrated on people and if we don't rethink and change our approach towards it, the problem will evoke its own solution be it in whatever form or expense.
So it is up to us to look at things as they are and address our issues appropriately, or we forever hold our peace and continue licking our wounds whenever our inability to commit to doing such evokes its own solutions, including the so called “foreign meddling”
