Controversy has trailed an alleged assault on Dr Rosaline Yacim, the Head of Department (HOD), Theatre Arts, University of Abuja, by a male colleague.

The female lecturer was reportedly assaulted by Prof. Saint Gbilekaa, a one-time Chief of Staff to former Benue State Governor, Gabriel Suswam.

The altercation was said to have stemmed from an issue involving a postgraduate student who is a younger brother to the professor.

An eyewitness, who pleaded anonymity for fear of victimisation, said the incident occurred on January 15, when Gbilekaa, also of the same department and faculty, angrily stormed Yacim’s office.

According to the witness, Yacim was attending to students and other guests, when Gbilekaa ordered the students out and began to shout at the HOD.

“Minutes later, the shouting was followed by commotion and screams for help by Yacim, prompting the students to rush back into the office, where she was found in a distraught state with her eyeglasses flung to the side of her office.

“Since then, there has been tension in the faculty. It is beginning to appear that the professor is not going to allow the school authority to do anything, due to his overbearing influence,” the witness said.

On his part, however, Gbilekaa denied any wrongdoing, saying he had never assaulted anyone, and that the matter is before the university’s administration.

“I have been advised not to talk to the media and avoid any media war. I also have a lot of people I can talk to; I have students I taught, who are journalists. I can give them my own side of the story. But I have been advised by the legal officer of the university and the registrar not to go to the press,” Gbilekaa said.

He added: “I have written my complaint to the vice chancellor. So, I am waiting for whatever action they will take. Meanwhile, I have been advised not to talk to the press. She can go to the press and defame me. But I am not talking to the press. She can say anything she wants. But everybody who knows me in this school knows that I am not a violent person.

“I am a foundation staff here. I don’t have any history of slapping anybody in this university, not to even talk about fighting. So, she can go ahead and say whatever she wants to say to the media.

“All these things are about women’s sentiments. I am not into it. So, thank you for trying to find out my own side of the story. But I have been advised not to talk to the press.”

Responding to an allegation of inaction by the management of the institution over the matter, the spokesperson, Dr. Habib Yakoob, said: “I am not aware of the issue you are talking about. I am not aware of such a matter before the school authority.”

Narrating her side of the story, Yacim said: “What happened that day was that he sent a document in an envelope through a student. But when I opened it, I discovered that it was his younger brother’s seminal paper. I asked the student to take it back to him and tell him that I had already asked his younger brother to liaise with the Post Graduate (PG) coordinator and not me, as is the procedure.

“We have a protocol, that the PG coordinator sees the script, then passes it to me to schedule. So, it shouldn’t come to me first; so that if there are issues, the coordinator will effect corrections and make our work easier at the defence.

“I sent the envelope with the document back. After some hours, he came into the office, asked the students to stand outside, shut the door, and started yelling.

“I have tried every time to keep quiet whenever he is yelling at me because people have advised me that if I don’t say anything, he won’t say that I said something. So, he kept yelling, even to the hearing of those in the general office.

“I then told him that you know this is our protocol. That was when he slapped me. Of course, my screams attracted the students who opened the door and saw me in the state I was in. And even when he eventually decided to leave, he was busy yelling and shouting and talking, that he will deal with me; he will show me, in this university, ‘who I am! Do you know who I am?’

“It was then that those in the general office came in and saw my glasses on the floor, with one of the lenses detached from the frame. The students were the ones who came in and picked them. He still kept yelling, and I told him that I wasn’t going to take it anymore.

“We schedule presentations and he hardly ever attends. The one he attended was when this same brother of his was presenting his proposal, and everyone was surprised to see him. He keeps saying that professors are aligning with what is not right. What have I done that isn’t right?”

Yacim added that the only thing she promised him was that she was going to write to the school about the matter, and wouldn’t let it go like that, because the next time “he might come to my office with a gun”. (The Guardian)

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