WHEN will men learn?
A remarkable academic journey that has seen him cresting on the top of his career, a good family life, the warmth of friends and associates, the respect of subordinates and, of course, some financial security.
All that has just collapsed at the gates of a prison – no thanks to the indiscretion that often assails men’s character. Human foibles.
Can we pass any judgment? No; a judge has just done that. Besides, who is “he that is without sin”, ready to “cast the first stone”? But, that is not the question. Why do great careers sometimes crash on the hot laps of women?
These – and more – must be going through the troubled mind of the Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU) teacher who has just bagged a six-year jail term for demanding sex to pass a student. For Prof. Richard Iyiola Akindele, it is the sad end of an exciting career that promised even more exciting days.
The story is well known. A student, Monica (namesake of the former White House intern whose testimony almost wrecked Bill Clinton’s presidency) Osagie complained that Akindele demanded sex to pass her. Her boyfriend advised her to record the professor’s demand.
Unaware that a trap had been set, Akindele got engrossed in a salacious telephone conversation with Monica. The audio hit the Internet and went viral. Akindele’s voice was heard the world over, demanding to sleep with his student five times before passing her.
What a test!
The student must sit for it five times before being certified to have passed.
Justice Maurine Onyetenu of an Osogbo High Court rejected the defence counsel’s plea to suspend Akindele’s sentencing for a plea bargain.
“Telling me to suspend sentence does not arise. Plea bargain does not arise. Maybe the case will continue to occur and reoccur because someone has not been used as an example,” the judge said.
She sentenced the convict to six years in jail. His cell phone in which “sensitive materials” were found is to be forfeited to the Federal Government.
It remains to be seen whether Akindele’s fate will deter other teachers who take advantage of their students. Even as the case was going on, there were reports of some other incidents of that kind in other schools.
Monica’s lawyer is happy that justice has been served. Akindele’s friends and associates are sad that he has joined the long list of men who failed the test of fidelity in matters of concupiscence. No one, it seems, is exempted from such temptation.
Monica Lewinsky hit the headlines when details of her tell-it-all erotic affair with former President Bill Clinton were unveiled. If any proof were needed of how easy it is to bring down an empire without firing a shot, there it was, laid bare on national television and on newspapers across the world.
Lewinsky was an unknown White House intern, who was believed to have had a sexual relationship with Mr Clinton, who after much pressure, insisted that what they had was “oral sex”, not “sexual intercourse”.
Before the world could say Lewinsky, “Monicagate” was here. “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky,” Clinton told a White House Conference that was televised nationally and internationally.
The statement sent analysts falling over one another in a race to define what constitutes “sexual relations”. In fact, Mr Clinton maintained that because certain acts were “performed on him, not by him”, he did not engage in sexual relations. But the semantic gymnastics did not last.
After being confronted with the raw evidence of a stain on Lewinsky’s blue dress that matched his DNA, Mr Clinton knew the game was up. He admitted having an “inappropriate intimate contact”.
In a trial that lasted 20 days, Mr Clinton’s presidency nearly collapsed under the weight of a woman’s flesh, but the Senate vote fell short of the two-thirds majority required to remove him from office.
But the phenomenon of sexual peccadilloes of great men did not begin with the Clinton-Monica affair. Recall the Biblical era. David and Uriah’s wife.
Fidelis Oyakhilome; remember him? He was doing well as head of the anti-drug squad, the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA), until a society woman showed up in his life. Jennifer Madike was amorously linked with the tough guy and then began his descent to first professional turbulence, then a web of controversy and finally oblivion.
Sani Abacha (of dreadful memory) seized Nigeria by the throat between 1993 and 1998. His name evoked fear. The treasury was plundered in so reckless a manner that the world was to later acknowledge as most bizarre. The courts were castrated as many, including the president-elect, Moshood Abiola, were hauled into detention without trial.
It was at the point when many eminent citizens thought it was better to go for broke that fate supervened in the shape of some unknown Indian women of easy virtue. The story of how the despot was despoiled of his evil powers, many insist – they are right, I must say – is yet to be told.
Consider Helen of Troy, the exceptionally beautiful wife of Menelaus who was abducted by Paris, over whom the 10-year Trojan War was fought.
Paul Wolfowitz, former World Bank President, former number two at the Pentagon in Bush’s America, and, according to our own Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, leader of the Third World’s anti-corruption battle.
When he approved hefty allowances for his girlfriend, no one, least of all Mr Wolfowitz, knew that, by so doing, he was digging his own grave. The bank’s board, goaded on by widespread workers’ indignation, set up a panel to examine the propriety of Wolfowitz’s action. They found him to have behaved below standards and, bowing to pressure from the White House, asked him to resign – a soft landing that was roundly condemned as a mere slap on the wrist.
“Iron” Mike Tyson was once the world heavyweight boxing champion. So confident of his raw physical power was he that he boasted that he could tear a lion apart with his bare hands. He knocked out opponents as if they were novices. Then at the peak of his reign, he was accused of raping a former beauty queen, Desiree Washinton. Tyson was jailed. His career crashed. He lost everything – fame and fortune.
Former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn got into trouble for allegedly having a coerced sexual relationship with an employee. He left with a payoff, lucky man. His wife took no offence. She dismissed it all as a “one- night stand which is now behind us”.
There is also the more recently case of the powerful CBS chieftain Les Moonves, whose 30-year creer at the top of the entertainment industry in America crashed, following revelations of an improper sexual relations with a string of women at CBS.. He forfeited his severance pay of $120 million.
Perhaps the greatest golfer to have swung the club, Tiger Woods, got into trouble when many women claimed to have had affairs with him. His wife left him; he was depressed; he lost form and fortune.
He is still battling to return to the top.
Back to Akindele. His conviction came at a time the police in Lagos sparked off a controversy over the appropriateness or otherwise of having sex in a car. Car sex – for ease of reference.
It is illegal, Police Commissioner Edgal Imohimi said, quoting Section 134 (a) Criminal Law of Lagos State, 2015, which states that such an act is indecent. He was reacting to an earlier position by a subordinate who said it was fine to unzip in a car.
Some have said such an act in a car is private, even if it is done right there on the roadside, so long as other road users are not denied of their right to movement. But, what if passersby decide to watch and form a crowd, the ubiquitous Lagos crowd that unnecessarily slows down traffic? Is an air-conditioned car with tinted glasses not private enough for such a show?
How will a policeman know what is going on in a parked car? Can he check by peeping without being invited? Won’t that amount to intrusion on a citizen’s privacy? If a whistle-blower reports to the police, what happens if the show has ended before an officer arrives at the scene?
I hope the police are not planning to deploy more men in the streets to be on the lookout for those doing it in the car. There are more serious matters, including violent crimes, demanding attention.
Meanwhile, psychologists will someday answer convincingly the question why sex holds such a devastating power on men and women.
Unruly lawmakers
OUR lawmakers were at their best again yesterday. They heckled President Muhammadu Buhari as he presented next year’s budget to the joint session of the National Assembly. To his credit, Buhari remained composed all through as they jeered, sneered and grumbled. He only advised the unruly lawmakers to behave because “the world is watching”.
Did they listen?
Not for them a thought on all the fine components of the document – the coming minimum wage, the explanation of the controversial subsidy issue, the battle to diversify the economy and all that. They seemed to have set out to embarrass Buhari.
Is anybody surprised? Not at all. It would have been baffling if the lawmakers had sat through it all with the sobriety that such an occasion demands. The vacuous expression on their faces – those who were not snoring that is – showed it all. Little wonder they soon relapsed into the drama they so much love to sell as lawmaking, throwing up their arms like touts struggling for the control of a motor park. Indecorous.
Here are people whose pay is one of the best kept public secrets anywhere. They do not know which party has the majority. National Assembly workers are not paid. Bills are piling up.
The lawmakers may have conducted themselves as beer parlour clients because, as a colleague observed, Nigerians have seen that many of them are, indeed and in fact, lawbreakers. He asked: “Didn’t they say tramadol and codeine are banned?
