A fresh sex-for-marks scandal is currently rocking the Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Ile-Ife.
According to a report by PREMIUM TIMES, a 400-level student of the Department of International Relations, Faculty of Administration, has accused a lecturer, Olabisi Olaleye, of sexually harassing her.
According to the report, Motunrayo Afolayan, who has since lodged a complaint at the university’s Centre for Gender and Social Policy Studies, alleged that Mr Olaleye failed her in ‘Diplomacy,’ course code IRS 305.
The allegation comes nearly two years after a widely publicised scandal involving another lecturer in the faculty, Richard Akindele, and a student.
Mr Akindele, a professor of Accounting, was dismissed from the university after he was indicted for demanding sex from a female student to help improve her grades.
A federal court later sentenced the disgraced professor to 24 months in prison.
Reliable sources within the university told PREMIUM TIMES that Ms Afolayan first took IRS 305 during the 2017/2018 academic calendar while in 300 Level but was allegedly failed because he refused to sleep with the lecturer.
During the next academic year, the 2018/2019 academic session, the student registered again for the course but received repeated threats from the lecturer that “she would fail again and again if she refuses to sleep with him.”
A senior official in the faculty, who does not want to be named, said the student sought the intervention of another lecturer in the department, Sunday Omotuyi, on the matter. Ms Afolayan, it was gathered, had feared she could fail again since she was still being pestered by the lecturer.
“But Omotuyi declined to intervene. He said he had approached the same lecturer in 2014 on behalf of another student but Olaleye flared up and insulted him. He even walked him out of his office. He said Omotuyi was too “junior” to talk to him on such matter. He even asked the student to go as far as the office of the vice-chancellor to report him,” the official reportedly said.
The official further stated that when other lecturers got wind of the development, they asked for proof of the allegation against the lecturer, and Ms Afolayan played a recorded voice of Mr Olaleye saying – in Yoruba – that, “I promise you would fail this course three times except you sleep with me.”
The recording was reportedly was done based on the advice of Ms Afolayan’s friends, who also claimed the lecturer had “tormented” them in a similar manner in the past.
Meanwhile, in response to the student’s complaint, the university authorities set up a probe panel headed by Yetunde Ajibade, the provost of the university’s postgraduate college.
Premium Times further reports that the panel has since met with all the concerned parties including Ms Afolayan; Mr Olaleye; Mr Omotuyi, whom the matter was first reported to; Kehinde Olayode, Head of Department, International Relations, among others.
While Mr Olaleye appeared before the panel in November last year, Mr Omotuyi met the panel on January 9.
Meanwhile, the university’s public relations officer, Abiodun Olarewaju, said that justice would be done in the matter.