The President of the Academic Staff Union of Universities, Prof. Biodun Ogunyemi, has called for stringent consequences to be meted on lecturers who sexually exploit their students.
He made this known in reaction to the ongoing investigations against Obafemi Awolowo University’s Prof Richard Akindele, who is embroiled in a sex-for-marks scandal with one of his students, Monica Osagie.
In a viral audio recording published online, Akindele had allegedly demanded for five rounds of sex to award Osagie a passing grade.
But Ogunyemi urged caution and due process to be followed before punishing an erring lecturer as “anybody can allege anything”.
Speaking about how to address sexual harassment cases against lecturers in an interview with The Punch, Akindele said, “First , I will talk about name and shame. When you have taken somebody through the due process of investigations and at the end of the day , the person is culpable . There should be no cover-up . Let the sanctions apply and let the whole world know about it. That is what I mean by saying that we should expose names of such lecturers and shame them in order to serve as a deterrent. But the lecturers must be taken through the due process . We have to emphasise the due process because anybody can allege anything . We also don’ t want a situation where our members will become victims of reverse persecutions . The fact that we will denounce any of our members that conduct themselves in an improper manner does not mean that our members should just be stigmatised over a mere allegation.
Two, the universities have their procedure for handling unethical conduct . Let the process be sustained and improved upon . There should be no sacred cows . When I joined the system ( in 1988 ) , the first booklet we were given was a staff guidelines. It used to be called the green book . They listed all the possible offences that a staff can commit and the appropriate sanctions . It was like your Bible. And in those days when they wanted to discipline you, they would first refer you to that green book.
But these days , I am not sure they do that again on most campuses . Some lecturers that come into the system now actually don’ t know what it takes to be a father figure or a mother figure to students , especially when the lecturers are young . Let the lecturers be inducted and made aware of their responsibilities and the certainty of sanctions.”