By Vincent Akanmode
As an undergraduate at the University of Lagos about three decades ago, I was walking from the library to my room in Mariere Hall when I saw a small crowd consoling a young girl. Her friend and fellow student in the school had just drowned in the swimming pool at the staff club of the university and she had become inconsolable. The question that agitated my mind was the impudence that could have pushed a young female student not only to go to a relaxation spot reserved for her lecturers but also dive into the swimming pool.
I finally found a clue to the puzzle after watching a sex-for-grade documentary video authored by an undercover BBC reporter, with Dr. Boniface Igbeneghu, a French lecturer in the Department of Modern European Languages, as the main character. In the 30-minute video that has gone viral on the social media since the beginning of the week, fifty-something-year-old Igbeneghu, an associate professor who also doubled as the pastor of the UNILAG chapter of the reputable Four Square Gospel Church, was seen making reckless sexual advances to a 17-year-old female admission seeker.
He began by gleefully announcing to the undercover reporter posing as an admission seeker that he was a pastor. Then in a feat reminiscent of altar call, he asked her to recite words that are meant for a sinner about to be led to Christ. Then in clear mockery of the Christian faith and all that the church stands for, he began to tell his guest how beautiful she was and how well he could make her feel like a real woman in spite of their age difference. I wager that even Lucifer would not contemplate such a high level of contempt for Christ and Christianity.
Given the way he licked his lips and his Adam’s apple rolled up and down the moment he was in the room with the teenager, it was apparent that Igbeneghu had always been held captive by his libido. Little wonder he practically lost control of his sexual urge at some point in the video, grabbing the hapless lady and demanding a kiss.
Before then, he had told the undercover reporter about a room in the university’s staff club used as a slaughter slab by a horde of sexual predators masquerading as lecturers in the school. According to Igbeneghu, the abode of sin, where the shameless sexual predators prey on hapless innocent girls who are sometimes younger than their granddaughters, is called the Cold Room. Of course the choice of name would not come as a surprise to any discerning mind, considering that it is the room where the chastity of many innocent young girls is murdered in cold blood. It is also the room that determines principled female students whose life ambition would be frustrated for declining a randy lecturer’s invitation.
Reports say that Kiki Mordi, the mastermind of the explosive video, is herself a victim. She could not graduate from the university simply because she refused to pander to the promptings of a he-goat lecturer who swore that she would not pass his course unless she yielded to his amorous desire.
Like other affectionate parents, my mind was fixed on my 15-year-old daughter as I watched Igbeneghu’s abominable act, because his is not the only case in the university. Barely 24 hours after the authorities of the university announced his suspension, another lecturer in the school’s Department of Economics, Dr. Samuel Oladipo, was also suspended for the same reason. Only on Thursday, a Lagos High Court adjourned till November 21 the adoption of final written addresses in the trial of a former UNILAG Accounting lecturer, Afeez Baruwa, accused of raping an 18-year-old admission seeker in his former office in the university in 2015. In April last year, the authorities of Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU) announced the indefinite suspension of Prof Richard Akindele whose telephone conversation in which he demanded for sex from a postgraduate student of Business Administration was recorded and released on the social media.
If prominent universities like UNILAG and OAU can turn this sacrilegious act into a past time with all the attention on them, only God knows the fate that must have befallen the female students in remote universities, polytechnics and other institutions of higher learning across the country. For instance, former female student of Delta State University told one of this newspaper’s correspondents during the week that she had to yield to the sexual demands of her course supervisor and became pregnant in the process because he made it the only condition upon which she would graduate from the university.
Unfortunately, the actions of these randy lecturers have beclouded the good works of the highly responsible ones who are working diligently to mould these young, impressionable minds as well as their male counterparts into responsible members of the society. That is why one cannot but empathise with the Chairman of the UNILAG branch of Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), Dr. Dele Ashiru, who said the university has been waging a difficult war against the bad eggs in the system. “As a union, we are against all unethical practices among colleagues, including sexual harassment and even abuse. The development is very disturbing and unfortunate. We have appealed to colleagues to understand that as lecturers, we stand in ‘locus parentis’ (in the place of parents) to these students and must not be seen in any way as not being protective.”
Well said, of course. But sexual harassment and rape may not abate in schools until there are harsher punishments than the current slap on the wrist stipulated by law. I personally recommend that serious consideration be given to public castration of errant lecturers if only to act as a deterrent to others in their ilk.
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