No fewer than six lecturers are being investigated by the Nnamdi Azikiwe University (Unizik) by the school authorities over sex scandal and may be sacked if found guilty.
This was disclosed by the institution’s Vice Chancellor, Prof. Charles Esimone while speaking with reporters in Awka.
It was gathered that two of such randy lecturers had already been shown the way out, while two others were on suspension.
Intimidation and harassment of female students in the institution had become rampant over the years without the management doing any tangible thing about the complaints.
However, the VC said he did not institute any panel that indicted one of the lecturers who was suspended for three months a few weeks ago as being claimed in some quarters.
He revealed that If after a thorough investigation, any of such lecturers was found guilty, the lecturer must be sacked, adding that the school had zero tolerance for such offences.
Esimone said: “The case involving one of the said lecturers never came up under me as a Vice-Chancellor. It was not under my tenure and I won’t be able to say much about it. It may be possible under any of my predecessors.
“But what I saw was a social media report -suspending him which is the way to go. Due process is important in handling such an issue.
“First, is to suspend the person and investigate. What we are doing now is investigation and once it is completed and he is indicted by the committee, it will then go to the joint council senate disciplinary committee and that is the committee that whatever it says will be presented to the council -the final decision.
“If we do otherwise, he will go to court; even if it stays 10 years and that is what we have had. The previous VCs’ did that and those who had come back, we are paying heavily because due process was not followed.
“Once you suspend a person, we investigate properly. There are no emotions, no sentiment about it, if you use emotion and dismissed the person, no problem, one year later, he will approach the court for damages.
“We have paid between 75 million and 80 million naira for something we knew were oblivious, but we did not follow due process.
“We are following due process in this case, once he is found culpable, he will leave the university, there are no two ways about it.”
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