The probe panel set up by the University of Calabar to investigate allegations of s+x¥al hara§§ment of female students by the suspended Dean of the school’s Faculty of Law, University of Calabar (UNICAL), Prof. Cyril Ndifon, has found the senior lecturer guilty of gross misconduct.
According to Sahara Reporters, the report of the panel set up to investigate alleged misconduct, s+x¥ql hara§§ment and ab¥se of office levelled against Prof. Ndifon “established that the suspended Dean, Prof. Cyril Osim Ndifon was using his official position to both intïmidât£ and bargain for s+x¥al favour from female students in the Faculty of Law.
It also established that the suspended Dean had been involved in students’ exploitation.
Elaborately, he had been perpetrating cruelty against students by forestalling the graduation of especially some female students at the appropriate time by withholding and refusing to release their results and threatening some that they would never graduate from the Faculty or go to the law school,” the panel stated in the report.
Earlier in September, SaharaReporters reported that Ndifon failed to appear before the panel constituted to investigate the allegations against him.
It should be recalled that in August, female students of the faculty of law at UNICAL staged a protest in the university, demanding the immediate removal of Ndifon for allegedly sexually harassing them.
Though Ndifon had claimed that the allegation of sexual harassment was plotted against him because he won the faculty election, the university management suspended him and constituted a panel to investigate the allegation.
The school’s vice-chancellor, Prof. Florence Obi, constituted the administrative panel to thoroughly investigate the allegations against andiron,
The panel relied on oral, and written submissions and physical and virtual participation from victims, fellow lecturers including professors and the President of the Law Students Association (LAWSAN) of the University of Calabar, Obi Benedict Otu.
Therefore, the panel recommended that the “suspended Dean of law should face the statutory Disciplinary Committee of the University of Calabar for appropriate sanctions applicable to acts of both Major and Gross – misconduct”.
“The panel makes this recommendation in view of Prof. Ndifon’s antecedents in the Faculty of Law, which from the testimonies given by both staff and students are in clear violâtioms of the extant rules and regulations governing the conditions of service of staff of the University of Calabar.
The panel also recommended as follows: “The suspended Dean should be made to refund over three million naira (N3m) realized from the payments made by the law students for the Law Journal which he neither published nor gave to the students.
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