Kiki Mordi, BBC reporter
The BBC reporter, Kiki Mordi, who exposed the randy lecturers at the University of Ghana and University of Lagos has said she did the documentary from a position of pain, adding, “I hope it brings healing to others”.
She featured on Channels TV breakfast programme, Sunrise Daily, on Friday. She said she was happy with the response from the public and hopes the response would translate to actions that would “make our schools safer.”
Sex-for-grade in schools is of epidemic proportion, she noted, and acknowledged that such documentary ought to have been done earlier than now, but insists that once it’s been done, she expects the conversation not to stop.
“Students are vulnerable and as the documentary shows, the lecturer has 100 percent power over the student,” she said.
Mordi who dropped out of the university as medical student on account of sexual harassment faulted the narrative that students contribute to sexual harassment by trying to bribe lecturers. According to her, this sort of theory whittles down the damage sexual harassment has caused and is causing.
She has an advice for parents: “I don’t like to blame parents but parents have a role to play.” Parents should have good relationship with their children such that such a child should be free to confide in them when things start going wrong, she advised.
Kiki was a dropout but this dropout status did not keep her down. She has since become a young lady of valour, becoming a voice for victims of sexual harassment and all women who are victims of male chauvinism. She is today a radio presenter, writer, movie producer, film director and undercover journalist. That’s a loaded brief for a young girl who gained admission to one of Nigeria’s universities as a medical student.
But her success story without a university degree has not satiated her appetite for knowledge. She wants to get back to the university but this time in a safer environment where no randy teacher would harass the life out of her.
“I’m a university dropout. I hope to go back to school though because I genuinely enjoy learning. I just hope to do it in a saner, safer environment,” the Port Harcourt-born Kiki said in a tweet.
She recalls that she was a medical student with her sight focused on a bright future ahead. But all that crashed in a heap as a university teacher made her life miserable with ceaseless harassment for sexual gratification.
She is currently an Africa Eye reporter for BBC where she has announced herself as a force never to be ignored.
Her expose has caught two big fish in Nigeria and Ghana respectively. One of the lecturers involved in the sex for mark scandal is Dr. Boniface Igbeneghu of the Faculty of Arts, University of Lagos who is also the head pastor of a Foursquare Gospel Church in Lagos. He has been suspended by the University and his church.
The second victim is Professor Ransford Gyampo of the University of Ghana. Unlike his Nigerian counterpart, the University of Ghana teacher has been fighting back, alleging that BBC was being used by those who cannot stand his outspokenness on critical national issues in his country.
