OAU finds ‘sex-for-marks’ professor guilty, sacks him

RICHARD Akindele, a professor at the Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Ile-Ife, has been fired after he was found guilty of  demanding sex with a female student demanding sex with a female student in order to score her higher in exams.

Eyitope Ogunbodede, Vice Chancellor of OAU, announced Akindele’s sack on Wednesday at a press conference.

Ogunbodede said the university’s Governing Council took the decision having found Akindele guilty of all the charges against him.

The sex-for-marks incident became public knowledge after Monica Osagie, the affected female student, recorded a phone conversation with the lecturer and posted the recording on social media.

The post went viral in a matter of hours, prompting the OAU management to suspend Akindele, and formed a panel to investigate the allegations.

Osagie says she has faced severe backlash since the university made her identity public when it released a statement.

“A guy came up to me at the bank and said, ‘Is this not the girl who harassed a lecturer?’ and he called me a prostitute. The security guard then had to push me away to go withdraw my money inside the bank,” she told CNN in an interview.

But while OAU reacted promptly and has sanctioned its bad-beahaving staff, same cannot be said of the University of Lagos, which is yet to take any concrete action against Olusegun Awonisi, a professor in the English Studies department of the University.

Awonisi – a former Commissioner of Education in Ogun State, as well as former Vice Chancellor of Tai Solarin University of Education (TASUED), Ogun State – was accused by an unnamed female student of severally having sex with her, threatening to fail her in exams if she refused.

The female student released nude pictures of Awonisi, which she claimed to have taken on one of the days he had tried to have sex with her.

“I am not his first victim. He does this all the time to students. I have completely given up. When it comes to academics he has failed me on tests before, when I talked to him concerning it he told me I should know what to do as I am an adult. I feel so dirty for even allowing such an old man touch me. But he doesn’t even care,” she said.

UNILAG management issued a statement on the university’s website saying that an investigative panel has been formed to look into the allegation. It called on anyone with relevant information to forward it to the panel.

Attempts by The ICIR to contact Awonisi proved abortive as he neither picked calls made to his phone lines nor return text messages sent to him.