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Lawal Olaitan Lateef, a Lecturer at Yaba College of Technology (YABATECH), is currently undergoing investigation after a female student he allegedly made a sexual arrangement with alerted her father, who consequently involved law enforcement. 

The lecturer in question. Photo credit: YABATECH Website 

According to a report published by the Foundation for Investigative Journalism (FIJ), Lateef is a 53-year-old lecturer in the institution’s Computer Technology department. He’s accused of threatening to fail the 20-year-old in her final year project, her SIWES placement and coursework if she doesn’t agree to meet him for sex. 

The young lady, whose name is withheld, recorded the conversation that confirms the arrangement. On the day they were due to meet, her father was already positioned nearby with police from Sabo Division. Lateef fled into their hands, according to FIJ’s report, when he grew suspicious that Abolade was texting someone during their walk into the hotel.

He was taken to Sabo Police Station, gave a statement, and was released on bail. The case remains under investigation, and he has not been charged as of publication.

The survivor told FIJ that Lateef’s advances began in her first year and escalated once she refused him. As her class adviser, project supervisor, SIWES supervisor, and System Programming lecturer, he held direct authority over four separate parts of her academic survival, and, she says, used all four.

In one encounter, she described to FIJ that Lateef delayed attending to her project proposal while seeing every other student. After which he reminded her, unprompted, that he had made advances toward her in ND1 and she had refused. 

“Do you think I have forgotten from ND1?” he reportedly said, before reciting her surname and matriculation number from memory and producing an old script to remind her he had already given her one carryover. He is then reported to have told her he would fail her current script, her project, and her SIWES placement too.

She reported the encounter to YABATECH’s management first, not the police. She says she was told to “play along.” So she called Lateef from her home in Sagamu, as he had instructed, and recorded the conversation.

As of publication, Lateef remains under investigation, with no formal charges filed against him. His release on bail, following what the survivor describes as an escalating pattern of coercion spanning four years and four points of academic leverage, leaves open the question of whether YABATECH’s internal advice to “play along” will be scrutinised as part of the case, or whether accountability will begin and end with the complaint filed.