In a year-long investigation due to be released on Monday, a BBC Africa Eye investigation, using undercover reporters posing as students, has revealed how female students are blackmailed and sexually harassed by male lecturers in exchange for better grades and mentorship.

The BBC invited PREMIUM TIMES for an exclusive viewing as well as an interview with Kiki Mordi, the lead reporter of the investigative documentary on Sunday.

The award-winning Africa Eye team focused its investigation on two of West Africa’s leading universities – the University of Lagos and the University of Ghana – to expose how the epidemic of sex for grades have left several victims traumatised for years.

The documentary also focuses on how lecherous academics target the most vulnerable female students – those struggling with studies, seeking admission or in search of mentors.

Through the use of secret cameras, the undercover reporters captured the gut-wrenching and cringe-inducing dialogues of four predatory lecturers from both institutions as they attempted to cajole and manipulate the undercover journalists into engaging in sexual acts with them.

Perhaps the most shocking case of the four instances of sexual harassment featured in the documentary was the case of Boniface Igbenegbu, a senior lecturer in the Faculty of Arts of the University of Lagos, who tried to manipulate an undercover reporter posing as a 17-year-old girl seeking admission into the university.

According to laws of Lagos State, where the age of consent is 18, Mr Igbenedu qualifies as a paedophile.

Mr Igbenegbu, who happens to be a pastor of Foursquare Gospel Church, a church with more than 8 million members worldwide, was identified as a known sexual predator on campus, and he left no one in doubt about his notoriety as he started making conversations of sexual manner during his first meeting with the undercover reporter. On their second meeting, he was asking the reporter details of her sexual history while promising not to tell her mother.

His case also highlights how randy academics groom students for sexual gratification. Mr Igbenegbu first offered himself as a spiritual and academic mentor. But on subsequent meetings with the undercover journalist, he threw caution to the wind, relentlessly cajoling the reporter into engaging in sexual acts with him.

In one such meeting, Mr Igbenegbu, who has been a lecturer in the university since 1992, in a flippant manner, justified sex for grades, thus revealing how normalised the menace has become in the academic community.

The documentary also included an interview with one of Mr Igbenedu’s former students who said she was abused for several years by the academic who also promised to pass her over to another of his colleagues after he was done with her.

The Cold Room

Unaware that he was being filmed, he also revealed how lecturers take female students to a sanctuary of some sort inside the university’s Senior Staff Club, nicknamed the ‘Cold Room.’ He described the ‘Cold Room’ as a dimly lit room where lecturers engage in forms of casual sexual acts with students.

Mr Igbenegbu even attempted to re-enact what happens in the cold room in his office with the undercover reporter, by switching off the light and inviting her to kiss him.

The case of Samuel Oladipo of the Economics department of the University of Lagos shows how university campuses are viewed as a place where female students are easily ambushed for predatory academics. While he was not specifically targeted by the Africa Eye team, he approached the reporter, Kiki Mordi, while the team was reporting on the university campus, and made sexual advances towards her with the promise of helping her with her studies.