A fact-finding committee set up by the University of Ghana to investigate alleged “sex for grades” accusations leveled against lecturers in the school has submitted a report to the Vice Chancellor.
The five-member committee chaired by Justice (retd) Vida Akoto-Ampofo, submitted the report to Prof. Ebenezer Oduro-Owusu on Tuesday, November 12, 2019.
Recall that Kiki Mordi and the BBC Africa Eye team’s documentary on lecturers demanding sexual favours from students before offering them help hit Ghana and Nigeria about two months ago.
In the documentary, Ghanaian lecturers from the university of Ghana, Prof. Ransford Gyampo and Dr Paul Butakor were captured on tape making inappropriate advances at journalists who posed as students.
Speaking at the 2019 Congregation Ceremony for graduates in the College of Humanities undergraduate programme, the Vice-Chancellor said that he has received a report on the investigation by the five-member committee and management will study it and implement the recommendations in the report.
“Management will therefore study the report and ensure the implementation of the recommendation using the appropriate adjudicative processes stipulated under the basic law and policies of the university,” Prof Oduro-Owusu said.
He also stated in his speech that the Center for Gender Studies and Advocacy (CENGENSA) had been tasked to develop a training programme to educate members of the university on what constitutes harassment.
Adding that this exercise will be both online and offline to make it easily accessible to students in the community.
He said:
“Once the framework is developed, it is proposed that training will be available in both online and in other formats and will also be extended to students.
“We are counting on CENGENSA to consult widely and come up with a training programme that is suitable to the University of Ghana and which will deal, decisively with the issues relating to sexual harassment.”
The University of Ghana has also created an e-mail address and a dedicated phone number to facilitate and create easy avenues through which all such sexual harassment cases may be reported.
“We particularly encourage people who may have fallen victim to such unfortunate incidents to take advantage to report them for redress,” the Vice-Chancellor said.
Watch the “sex for grades” documentary below:
