A female student at the University of Calabar has narrated how a law professor allegedly forced her to have 0ral $€x with him in his office on campus.
Other female students also shared graphic accounts of their encounter with the professor, Cyril Ndifon.
The university, which is in Cross River State, south-south Nigeria, has been in the spotlight lately after some female students accused the now suspended professor of sexual harassment.
Mr Ndifon was the dean of the university’s faculty of law before his suspension over the allegations.
A 200 level female student in the law faculty told an investigation panel that the professor took advantage of her and forced her to have oral sex with him inside his office in the school when she was seeking a transfer to the faculty from the Department of Conflict Studies.
A copy of the report released to the public has the student’s name and that of other survivors redacted.
Mr Ndifon had allegedly assured the student that he would help her get into the law faculty provided she was willing to be available for s€x anytime he wanted it, the student told the panel.
“Prof Ndifon called her to come to the office the next day and when she came, he locked the office and brought out his penis and told her that if she sucked his penis, he would accept her into the faculty.
“After much pressure from the suspended Dean and feeling frustrated, this survivor gave in and sucked his penis and almost got choked as Prof Ndifon held her head while forcing his penis into her mouth,” the report said.
The student said someone else, not Mr Ndifon, ultimately helped her to get admission into the faculty.
The report said when the professor later stumbled on the student and got to know that she was now a student in his faculty, he asked her to meet him again in his office but she tactfully declined.
“She lied to him that she was in the hospital,” the report said.
According to the report, the student read out to the panel members various text messages she allegedly got from the suspended dean.
She also presented before them the voice notes allegedly sent to her by Mr Ndifon, warning her not to appear before the panel.
Nine survivors appeared, either physically or virtually, before the seven-member panel. They gave their testimonies and presented evidence of sexual harassment against Mr Ndifon.
Almost all of them said the harassment occurred in Mr Ndifon’s office.
They alleged that the professor deliberately failed them, sometimes repeatedly, in the course he was handling because they refused to give in to his sexual demands.
The panel, in its report, said it verified the evidence submitted by the survivors, and recommended that the professor be made to appear before a disciplinary committee of the university.
Mr Ndifon reportedly refused to appear before the panel.
The panel said it had established that the suspended professor violated the university’s rules and regulations by “using his official position to both intimidate and bargain for sexual favour from female students in the Faculty of Law.”
It also said that it had established a case of students’ exploitation against Mr Ndifon.
“He had been perpetrating cruelty against students by forestalling the graduation of especially some female students at the appropriate time by withholding and refusing to release their results and threatening some that they would never graduate from the faculty or go to the law school,” the panel says in its findings.
“The suspended dean should be made to refund over N3 million realised from the payments made by the law students for the law journal which he neither published nor gave to the students.
“The university should make a rule to stop lecturers from asking students to come and see them at odd (after official) hours and if need be, encourage the culture of not locking their offices when consulting with students. This is consistent with global best practice,” the panel said in its recommendations.
