Professor Bamidele: Ekiti State University VC

Prof. Samuel Oye Bamidele who was appointed Vice-Chancellor of Ekiti State University (EKSU), is a senior pastor of Deeper Life Bible Church. He has revealed how he copes with ladies who tempt members of the academic staff of the institution.

While acknowledging that every human being is tempted at one point or the other, he however said that the power of being a Christian is that God will give you the ability, the unusual supernatural power to be able to overcome temptation without falling into it.

In his words: “There is a difference between temptation and falling into temptation. For example, we are all men here and that makes it good. Supposing a woman is here now, the atmosphere will not be the same. I will not say I have not been tempted in the sense that maybe an amorous person comes in, wanting to show a quarter of her breast. I will say, ‘Excuse me, go out and dress properly. As a lecturer, you can’t come into my office like that.’

“Some students will come with the intention to tempt you, trying to make eye contacts, and I will say, what are you trying to do? For you to be able to overcome temptation, you must resist it. But some people don’t resist the picture of temptation, so they run into it. So, to respond to your question directly, I want to say that to God be the glory, since I gave my life to Christ, I have not been tempted to the extent of falling, touching another person’s wife or student; never, never. And it is not only girls or women that cause temptation; some are tempted with money. They supervise students and collect money on projects. I supervise Ph.D students and I don’t take anything from them. You cannot even try me. So, all those ones, if you can keep yourself from being attracted by women or by money or material things of this world and you are contented, it will be easy for you to overcome temptation. But summarily, every human being will face temptation at one point or the other, but the power to overcome that temptation can only come from Christ.”

On what measures his administration will put in place to prevent cases of sexual harassment of female students by their male lecturers, Prof. Samuel Oye Bamidele, revealed:

“We are going to work on that. I have said I am committing my first year to IGR and this other one is academic and discipline. We are trying to put some things in place that will checkmate some lecturers that cannot keep their libido, and to that extent, we are going to go through management and then the Senate to fashion out some strategies to protect our female students from sexual harassment. That one is being planned, I may not feel out everything now.

“Things are changing in this university and that is the truth. The head matters. If there is seriousness at the top, everybody will fall in line. They know that if I catch you sexually harassing female students, you will be in trouble. If as the vice-chancellor I am also one of those carrying girls and ladies around, I won’t have the mouth to tell those who are doing it to stop or sanction them in line with the rules. Now, it is no longer going to be business as usual.

“Some regulations will come out in a short while to checkmate all those things in terms of the dressing of the students, because students also can be harassers. Female students can harass male students by their amorous outlook. We want to checkmate those things and for the staff, admin, teaching and non-teaching, we are going to have some codes that will create a level of restriction as to how they can harass female students.

Adapted from The Nation interview. Read more here: http://thenationonlineng.net/plans-lecturers-cant-keep-libidos-ekiti-state-varsity-vc-prof-bamidele-2/