The Vice Chancellor of the Obafemi Awolowo University, OAU, Prof. Eyitope Ogunbodede, has said the varsity may involve the police to verify a telephon
The Vice Chancellor of the Obafemi Awolowo University, OAU, Prof. Eyitope Ogunbodede, has said the varsity may involve the police to verify a telephone conversation involving a professor, Richard Akindele, at the institution who was accused of demanding sex from a female student. A yet-to-be identified female student at the university last week released a telephone conversation between her and the professor where the latter was heard demanding five rounds of sex from the student to upgrade her mark from 33 to a pass.
The VC said although the university had not reported the case to the police, it might involve them to get to the root of the matter if investigation ran into a hitch. He said, “We have a committee that is investigating the matter now and we gave them one week to submit their report. If we run into any hitch, we can use all the resources available to get to where we are going. But once things are running smoothly, we may not need to involve the police.
“But we must first identify those involved and where they are; if we have any problem doing that, then that is when the university will invite the police. The committee’s one week will elapse by Wednesday. We will brief you about it. I need to state that we have excellent relationship with the police, the DSS and others.”
Meanwhile, a professor, who is a former colleague of the embattled don, has said that the audio recording may not be strong evidence to nail the lecturer. The professor, who did not want to be identified, said the female student was a blackmailer seeking to destroy the lecturer because of her brainlessness and laziness.
He said, “I have thought again on the audio recording and I want you to examine this: there is no portion in the audio recording where the name of OAU was mentioned. This is a major issue and therefore, I am sure that OAU may not own the audio for legal reasons. It will be difficult to address this matter in court when the chips are down. The audio is not a brilliant recording because many necessary ingredients that can expose such matters are missing in the audio.”
