UNILAG Rape: Management & Committee Lock Horns Over Suspect’s Employment
There are indications that the four-man panel set up by the University of Lagos to investigate the circumstances surrounding the alleged rape of a candidate by one Dr. Akin Baruwa will submit its report on Wednesday.
Sources privy to the panel’s report on Monday told newsmen that one of the findings by the committee is that Baruwa, at the time of allegedly committing the crime, handled a course at the Distance Learning Institute at UNILAG.
But because he was said not to be entitled to an office, the committee is said to have discovered that another lecturer gave him the office where the student was allegedly raped.
The panel, headed by the Dean of Student Affairs, Prof. Tunde Babawale, was constituted about three weeks ago after authorities at the university first denied that Baruwa was on its staff list.
According to a source, “The panel has recommended that the lecturer who was assigned the office where Baruwa was said to have raped the student should be sanctioned. Baruwa is indeed teaching a course at the DLI but he was not assigned any office. The lecturer who yielded his own office to him will be queried.”
Baruwa had, on July 23, allegedly raped the 18-year old admission seeker in an office within the Faculty of Business Administration.
The university had promptly accused Baruwa of impersonation, denying that he was part of its teaching and non-teaching staff.
The Dean, Faculty of Business Administration, Prof. Rasheed Ojikutu, had said, “The offence in question is so disgusting and unspeakable that adding impersonation to it makes it more grievous. There is no question of denial here because individuals must answer for their undesirable deeds and conducts in the society. Therefore, we would have owned up to his affiliation to our faculty if he had been one of us. Any student who claimed to know him as a teacher is certainly not a student of the faculty.”
However, attempts by our correspondent to speak with Ojikutu on Monday was not successful as he neither picked his calls nor responded to text messages sent to his line.
PunchNG
