Richard Akindele was a professor of Management Sciences at the Obafemi Awolowo University in Ile-Ife. In December 2018, he was sentenced to two years in prison following allegations of trading marks for sex with some of his students. As such, he came close to being regarded as the one who pulled the veil off from the sex-for-marks syndrome in the Nigerian university system.
This sensational case at the Yoruba nation’s Home of Love may have prompted the visit by some British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) undercover female reporters who, posing as prospective students, helped to expose the randy dispositions of some lecturers in two of West Africa’s most prestigious citadels of learning; namely the University of Lagos and University of Ghana in Legon.
While we may not know how the Ghana situation played out eventually, airing of the BBC Africa Eye documentary which resulted from this investigative journalism led to the immediate suspension of the two Unilag lecturers involved. But after what had seemed like eternity, raising suspicion that the matter may have been swept aside as usual, Dr Boniface Igbeneghu of the Department of European Languages and Dr Samuel Oladipo of the Economics Department were reportedly served with their sack letters on May 31, 2021.
And, as if on cue, there was this sense of a rude awakening across campuses in the land. The media suddenly became awash with stories of lecturers’ exposed illicit exploits on campus. There was hardly any public tertiary institution worth its name in Nigeria that did not have a case or two reported in the news – Ibadan, ABU, UNN, Abuja, and BUK — just name it. In fact, it was shameful to observe our ivory towers hurrying back to a strict demonstration of their intolerance of immoral acts on campus.
What’s more, two days after the BBC video footage, even the National Assembly was roused from its apparent slumber as Senator Ovie Omo-Agege’s Sexual Harassment Bill was hurriedly re-introduced in the Red Chamber long after its first presentation in 2016.
Everyone now laboured to do that which ought to have been accomplished long ago. Here in Rivers State, a professor of Banking and Finance at the state’s premier university was sent packing for alleged monetary extortion. Similarly, Ken Saro-Wiwa Polytechnic did not spare about 10 lecturers who allegedly indulged in various sleazy conducts.
In Akwa Ibom State University, the Vice Chancellor, Prof Eno Ibanga, at a press conference, disclosed that eight lecturers in his institution, including an associate professor, had been sacked for alleged extortion and sexual harassment. This was in addition to an ongoing investigation of 10 students who were apprehended while allegedly preparing to engage in cult initiation.
There now appears to be a lull in cases of busted predator lecturers. It may well be that the randy teachers are still scared of any nosey foreign journos or that the university authorities are doing a good job at barring their fangs; or even that the long ASUU strike is to thank for the seeming hiatus. But it is certainly not because exploitable opportunities have ceased to present themselves. And also not because of the introduction of any stricter laws against such misdemeanors.
In addition to occasional fang barring, some universities are beginning to admonish their students the more, especially the most vulnerable among them. A ready example is the University of Calabar whose Vice Chancellor, Prof Florence Obi, was recently reported to have tasked lazy students in her school on hard work in order to avoid falling prey to the people she referred to as hawks in the university system.
Obi gave the warning during a Sunday service at the university’s Conference Centre.
“…When you are a lazy student, you become vulnerable to hawks in the system.
“There are so many hawks in the system, from professors to cleaners, waiting to perch on you.
“If you give them the opportunity, you will be devoured.
“They will keep exploiting you because you have made yourself a borderline student for refusing to work hard,” she cautioned.
It is true that, even before their admission, there may be students who yearned for the freedom to explore life on their own and who may also have opted to succeed at all cost. So also are there morally depraved lecturers who are permanently on the look-out for such student baddies. Meetings of these like-minds hardly generate any rumpus on campus. Rather, it is mostly the serious and unyielding students who kick up the murky splashes that often expose and smear these academic predators.
Again, who said it is uncommon for two randy professors to meet over drinks and compare notes on their campus escapades just as any two overindulgent male teens are wont to confer over their standings with some neighbourhood girls?
Some of these academics even descend to the level of conducting impromptu and ‘all-important’ tests on a day any of their student targets is absent from lecture if only to force the potential prey to come pleading for consideration while unwittingly paving the way for a possible extra-curricular compromise.
Yes, our academic hawks are getting more sophisticated, especially with the arrival of LGBTs; and so, any future undercover reporters from the BBC, CNN or wherever may need to also gear up very well and possibly change tactics more often in order to maintain track.

By: Ibelema Jumbo