Prof Cyril Ndifon, Dean of the Faculty of Law at the University of Calabar, has responded to charges of sexual harassment of female law students.
Several students organized a protest at the university, accusing Ndifon of sexually harassing them on a regular basis. They marched about the campus in groups late Monday afternoon, yelling, ‘Ndifon, go! go!’
The students carried posters with messages such as “Ndifon Must Go!” “Prof Ndifon, let the girls with big bre***s breathe, stop suffocating us!!!”, “Law Girls Are Not a Bonanza”, “Prof Ndifon Must Stop Grabbing our B**bs.”
Comrade Benedict Otu, President of the Law Students Association of Nigeria, LAWSAN, Unical branch, led the students in the demonstration.
The Dean, however, denied the charges in an interview with CrossRiverWatch, a digital platform. He alleged that the law students’ protest was orchestrated by faculty members who had vowed to bring him down.
Ndifon condemned the claims as “blatant lies” intended to ruin his reputation.
He said: “Since I defeated some persons in an election that was keenly contested, to emerge as Dean of the faculty, it hasn’t been easy. I had skipped several booby traps.
“These allegations are baselessly masterminded by my detractor, who had vowed to ensure that my image is dragged into the mud just because I won the faculty elections twice.
“If you look at the placards you will discover that the placards have one person’s handwriting. Again how come the protesters know that we were holding a meeting with the Vice Chancellor if it is not the handiwork of an insider?
“We were supposed to hold a meeting with the Vice Chancellor to enable us to iron out important issues troubling us in the faculty, while the meeting was ongoing, we were told that some students were outside with placards, protesting against me, demanding that I should be unseated.
“From what I am told, LAWSAN President, Benedict Otu, cajoled some students that they were to go for a meeting with the Vice Chancellor at her office, only to dish out placards bearing false representations about the Dean, and asked his colleagues to chant slogans that berated my personality.
“This won’t work. Colleagues of mine who are bent on tarnishing my reputation just to destroy me. The question is: where are the victims of sexual harassment? Can someone harass girls without the ladies coming out to raise the alarm that they were sexually harassed?
“For Christ’s sake, I don’t teach Year 2 B or Year one student, so I don’t know why they have chosen to drag my name into the mud. This was why I said earlier that the allegations were lies, cooked from the pit of hell, just to destroy a reputation that I had spent decades building.”
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