An academic at the Obafemi Awolowo University’s International Relations Department, Olabisi Olaleye, fingered in a case of sexual harassment divorced his wife years ago because “man cannot survive on only one type of food”, ICIR reports.
The source, who asked to be kept anonymous in order not to strain family relationships, said Olaleye met his wife, Adebisi Joko, sometime in 2005 when they were both undergraduates at Obafemi Awolowo University. She, a practising nurse, studied Nursing and Midwifery while he was a student of International Relations.
Motunrayo Afolayan, a fourth-year student IRS department, recently filed a complaint against him, alleging that he failed her in IRS 305 (Diplomacy) for refusing his sexual advances.
PREMIUM TIMES reported that when she registered for the course the following session, the lecturer warned that “she would fail again and again if she refuses to sleep with him”.
According to The ICIR‘s source, Olaleye hails from Ekiti State and his former wife is from Ijebu-Ode, Ogun state. They had two children while married. When he was appointed as a lecturer shortly after his graduation in 2007/8, “he started womanising and drinking first-class”.
“He stopped coming to Ijebu. Later, he called his wife and said he wanted a divorce,” the source narrated.
“They asked why and he said he prefers a life where he can sleep around with women to staying with one woman. What he had was more psychological, but the problem with OAU is I don’t think they profile most of their lecturers before appointing them.
“He told his wife and people who bothered asking in confidence. He said in Yoruba that one cannot be eating amala every single day, you have to add other meals, and a man cannot do without being promiscuous.”
At various times, Joko discussed her problems with senior lecturers and professors at the university, but the attitude she met shocked her: Many said as a lecturer it is normal to be lustful.
“They said, besides, they’ve done all those things too and that he will eventually get back his senses. So that place was like a cesspit of sexual harassment.
“It got to a stage that his wife had to fight a student on campus and they were like what is happening? Is it that bad? Is he not just befriending her? She got there one evening and saw the student. She had to report to the Deputy Vice-Chancellor (DVC) then, and the wife of the DVC told her what I don’t believe any sane person would say.
“She was like, ‘Our own daddy too, that is how he did then before he grew old. Old age will collect the habit from him. You cannot tell a lecturer not to have affairs with students at OAU. It has become endemic at the university and that is why it is very hard for them to mete out sanctions. Everybody has a dossier of everybody’s secrets.”
His wife said after a couple of visits to the school, a female professor, who was married to another lecturer, called her and said, “See, Mummy Femi, all this you’re saying, you see when you finish, they all used to make a mockery of you. That’s how they behave.”
Olaleye reportedly told his former wife he needed to divorce because he did not want to cause her pain as he could not stop having extramarital affairs.
Sources said the lecturer disclosed in past conversations that he is not the only university employee who prefers to be unmarried in order not to feel guilty about their sexual profligacy.
When The ICIR reached out to Joko, she declined to give comments and said she has decided against speaking to journalists about the matter.
what they want is total dismissal.”
