Wrong call, Madame Minister

Women Affairs Minister Uju Kennedy-Ohanenye  has been busy walking back her blunder. She disclosed last week that she was herself a victim of sexual harassment in her university days and would, thus, not abet such abuse against other victims. She spoke against the backdrop of the sexual harassment allegation by students of the University of Calabar (UniCal) Law faculty against suspended professor and former dean of the faculty, Cyril Ndifon. The minister had recently made a curious call amidst ongoing investigation of the allegations against Ndifon by the UniCal management, threatening students who claimed they were sexually harassed with jail time if they testified against the law professor.

Addressing university administrators and journalists on sexual harassment in tertiary institutions at a forum in Abuja last Monday, Madame Minister said she had a lecturer on Constitutional Law while in school who nursed an ulterior motive concerning her and failed her several times because she refused to play along, thereby making her to almost miss going to Law School. She recounted: “We all went to university and we know how some students go for more marks and how some lectures victimise students. I was also a victim while in the university. I also wrote a letter on a particular course in Constitutional Law for my paper to be re-marked, because a lecturer had been failing me and asking me to pay for a place and invite him to come. I wrote a letter after others left for Law School without me. I wrote the letter and requested for a re-marking of my paper in another school and refused to compromise to him. When a panel was set up and my paper was brought, they realised he had written 80 percent but (yet) indicated ‘fail’ on the list.”

That recollection was with particular reference to the minister’s earlier intervention in UniCal management’s probe of Ndifon that had elicited public uproar. “On the University of Calabar case, I made those calls personally. If a child can come out and carry placards on the streets, is it to speak to a mother like me that will be a problem? All I asked was for justice to be done,” she said, adding along the way: “So, for the UniCalabar case, I spoke with the students, the vice-chancellor and the professor (who) asked us to write him a letter. Now, we are getting more people involved, including the (Department of State Services) DSS, for investigations to be carried out because there are talks that show that there is more going on besides sexual harassment. Without investigation, we won’t know and we would not allow emotions to be involved to ensure we get justice.”

As minister oversighting women affairs, Kennedy-Ohanenye’s interest in the UniCal affair is in order and indeed expected. It would be oddly negligent of her ministerial brief were it otherwise. But that was also why the manner of her earlier intervention was odd, spurious and at variance with expectation. 

The UniCal management had suspended Professor Ndifon on 17th August after female students of the Law faculty openly protested and petitioned against him, claiming he had subjected them to sexual harassment and assault. Ndifon denied the allegation and countered that the students’ protest was orchestrated by adversaries within the faculty who harboured a grudge against him. Before the suspension, the university management issued the don a query, and said it was dissatisfied with his response; it therefore raised a panel of inquiry to interrogate the charges against him while also giving him the opportunity to defend himself. UniCal Vice-Chancellor, Professor Florence Obi, explained severally that the management was left with no option than to raise the inquiry panel because Ndifon’s accusers were both staff and students of the Law faculty and the allegations were diverse. “Let me emphasise that sexual harassment is not the only issue being investigated by the university, although that is what has taken the centre stage with the public. There are equally serious matters that relate to violation of extant rules and regulations of the university being investigated as raised in the students’ petition,” she said in one her media encounters.

According to the vice-chancellor, the inquiry panel was raised in line with public service rules and the university management, in pursuit of an unbiased probe, made sure to involve many interest groups. Observers, she noted, were drawn from the Public Complaints Commission (PCC), the Independent Corrupt Practices and other Related Offences Commission (ICPC), the Nigeria Bar Association (NBA) and Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDA), the Nigeria Police gender unit, UniCal alumni and students, among others. “In addition to this, the panel has livestream sessions on zoom as advertised in some national dailies, through which interested persons participate,” she added. The vice-chancellor said she, however, learnt the investigative panel had severally invited Ndifon without him honouring the dates. 

“It was confounding (the minister) had seemed to be pushing to obstruct the UniCal inquiry and exuded more concern for the accused don than for his alleged victims.”

But the call that Madame Minister alluded to in her comment at the Abuja event had not shown as much dispassion. It was the leaked audio of a telephone conversation she had with a UniCal student by which she threatened witnesses to keep off the panel or risk jail time if they give testimony contradicting alleged private confessions to her by the supposed victims. In the audio message, the minister fumed at one of the girls who claimed to have been sexually harassed by the don, warning her not to allow herself be used by the vice-chancellor: “If your VC makes you to go and lie against somebody, you will go to jail, trust me. I want you to be very careful because your future is at stake. You can’t join anybody and maltreat a fellow human being, and equally nobody wants you to be maltreated,” she said. 

The minister plied a treatise on how the witness could get implicated, and this bears being relayed in her words: “The day I spoke with you, I recorded what you said and you told me the whole truth. I have contacted your VC, I don’t know what her plans are, I don’t want to quote anybody, I don’t equally want to condemn anybody or judge anybody. But I want you to be very careful because this thing is going to backfire. If I were you, as you have already said to me: nobody raped you, nobody sexually harassed you. I’ll keep off from this case if I were you. But if she makes you to go there, she is recording whatever you people are saying in that panel and if she records you and I bring my own and get you contradicted and this man has gone to court, my ministry will join them and make you go to jail so that you will be an example to others. So I want you to be very, very careful. You are telling me, if your VC permits you before you can come and see me? There is nothing she can do to you, she is not the one paying your school fees. So, face your future by standing on the truth at all times. Save my number. When you have time to visit me, I will find a way to empower you people so that your life will be easier for you. I am a minister, I am above her by position, you know that. So don’t go and do anything that will put you into a very big trouble, that will scandalise you before the whole world because this matter has gone far and beyond. Now, I won’t play what you people said to me except when you people try to deny it, that is when I will play it. I will conceal it because it’s something you told me in confidence. So, I am warning you to keep off from lying against anybody.”

Those assertions by Kennedy-Ohanenye were a mélange of witness intimidation, blackmail and inducement simultaneously, besides prejudicial summations about the inquiry’s proceedings. Following the outrage that trailed the leakage of the audio, she tendered an apology, saying her intentions were “sincere and aligned with my consistent advocacy for the welfare of Nigerian women and the pursuit of justice. I stand for all Nigerian women, and I stand for justice.” It was well and good she did that, because it was confounding she had seemed to be pushing to obstruct the UniCal inquiry and exuded more concern for the accused don than for his alleged victims. And she is women affairs minister! Now that she is strenuosly walking back her iterations, she should be courageous to just admit she made a wrong call and not burn energy whitewashing the call.