Our correspondent goes in search of Akin Baruwa, the ‘lecturer’ at University of Lagos said to have raped an 18 year old female admission seeke
Jamiu Yisa
His only link to the school was that he once a project Supervisor at the Distance Learning Institute, DLI, of the institution, it was gathered.
Baruwa who served as project supervisor at the university’s DLI two years ago, was accused of raping the young girl in a study room on July 23, 2015.
He was subsequently arrested and arraigned before an Ikeja Magistrate’s Court, Lagos, on Thursday and ordered to be remanded at the Kirikiri Prison.
During our correspondents visit to the institution’s Faculty of Business Administration, our findings show that his name was nowhere to be found on the lecturers list.
The Head, Information Unit of the university, Mr. Olagoke Oke, said Baruwa was not an employee of the institution, adding that he was only engaged two years ago as a project supervisor at the DLI.
According to him, “The nearest you can get was that he was a project supervisor at the DLI and what led to his disengagement I do not know. He is therefore a not a member of staff of the university, whether teaching or non-teaching.
“He also does not belong to the part-time or full-time teaching staff of the school. His name is not on the master list of workers of the university. I have checked the staff list using his full name and initials and could not come up with any such name.
“I have also checked the list of office accommodation given to members of staff of the university and his name is not there. There is no office allocation attached to such a name. How he reportedly entered the said office where the crime took place is what we are looking into as an institution,” he averred.
He told our correspondent further that the university authority has set up a committee to unravel the mystery behind the rape allegation.
Some of the accounting students of the institution who spoke with our correspondent said they neither know him as a full or part-time lecture in the department nor passed through him at one time or the other.
Majority of the female students said they were not aware of the development while few admitted reading the story on the internet.
As the female students seem not to have an idea of the rape saga, our correspondent approached the male students maybe they would be prepare to spill the bean.
Four male students sitting under a tree within the faculty approached for comments on the issue feigned ignorance of the development and amused at the same time.
The students who do not want their names in print, said that they read the story online and were not sure of its authenticity.
They requested for the picture of the alleged randy lecturer and when it was shown to them through an earlier thread that carried the story and his picture, they chorused that the man is not a lecturer in the department.
According to one of them,”with all the lecturers that I know in this faculty, I have never come across this man. He’s not a lecturer here. Besides, I don’t think rape thing can be possible in the first place, for a student to be raped in a study room in broad day light. Well, that girl is not a UNILAG student because sex is nothing to them as far as they are concerns.
“They are even the ones that requested for it in order to get favours from the lecturers. If you come here at night, in fact, you will see it happening live all around the campus,” said one them.
The Dean of the Faculty of Business Administration, Prof. Rasheed Ojikutu, was not available for comments as at the time of filing this report.