Victoria OparaFEMALE lecturers now occupy the principal offices in the University of Calabar (UNICAL) Law Faculty following allegations of sexual assault by students levelled against the suspended Dean of the faculty, Cyril Ndifon.
UNICAL Vice-Chancellor, Florence Obi, disclosed this during an interview with Channels Television on Saturday, August 26.
“In my university, we have put up so many measures that we know, going forward, nobody in the Faculty of Law will hold students to ransom and make any female student so vulnerable to having amoral relationship. We have put about seven committees in place. There is a committee to assign students to supervisors because there are accusations that the suspended dean took all female students to supervise, and that made them vulnerable to his advances. Now, there is a committee to handle that.
“There is a result vetting committee. We have also made a clean sweep in the faculty where we have the acting dean, for now, a woman; the sub dean, a woman; the faculty officer, a woman; we want to see that the students are protected.”
She decried the impunity with which sexual harassment is being carried out in Nigerian schools.
Obi approved Ndifon’s suspension and replacement after female students of the institution’s Law faculty staged a protest accusing him of sexual harassment and intimidation.
The protest generated several reactions, including those from ex-students who shared similar experiences with Ndifon and other lecturers such as Frank Enor, Otora Agbor, Elvis Okorn, and Okoi.
This would be Ndifon’s second suspension for allegations of sexual abuse. The first time was in 2015 when he was accused of raping a student in his office.
Although he denied the recent allegations against him, the University found his defence unsatisfactory and relieved him of his position as Dean, appointing Rose Ugbe to serve in Acting capacity until the election of a substantive Dean.