Leaked nude photos of a Nigerian professor and former Vice Chancellor has stirred up a fresh sex scandal controversy. The professor who teaches in the Department of English at the University of Lagos (UNILAG) has been identified as Victor Olusegun Awonusi. This is coming a day after the Nigerian Senate made a new move against sexual harassment in tertiary institutions, particularly based on the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife sex for marks scandal involving Professor Richard Akindele and a postgraduate student, Monica Osagie. An unnamed female student who made the pictures of the UNILAG professor undressed to his underpants available to Linda Ikeji’s Blog (LIB) alleged that Awonusi was of the habit of sexually harassing students. He has since denied the allegations claiming that it was a result of a failed attempt to blackmail him after he refused to help the lady upgrade her Cumulative Grade Point Average (CGPA) using his influence. reports that Awonusi who is a former Commissioner for Education in Ogun State was the first Vice Chancellor of Tai Solarin University of Education, Ijagun. He is a widely respected scholar of international repute. The lady, who Awonusi named as Joy Uwana had reportedly said that she got the pictures after one the ‘encounters’ with the embattled senior academic. She noted that she had to do that after failing several tests he conducted. But the professor of English Phonetics claimed that the former student who graduated about three years ago stole his phone from which she transferred the pictures. He added that she did not fail his course when she obtained the pictures back in 2015. The UNILAG management had thereafter promised to investigate the controversial pictures while assuring members of the public of its zero tolerance to sexual harassment. The allegation by the said female student indicated that Awonusi had made “molestation a part of him” and believed he should be stopped. In her words, “I am not his first victim. He does this all the time to students. I have completely given up when it comes to academics he has failed me on tests before. When I talked to him concerning it he told me I should know what to do I am an adult. I feel so dirty for even allowing such an old man touch me. But he doesn’t even care. As long as you satisfy his wants (sic). “I’m tired of everything. He should be stopped before he ruins the lives of other innocent girls in that English department. When he touches me I am always in tears but it doesn’t stop him. “He is destroying the mental state of girls in UNILAG. I just want him stopped. I reached out because I don’t want him to continue molesting girls. She alleged that the professor was not alone in the act as some other lecturers in the Department of English form a “cult” in sexually exploiting vulnerable female students. “The English department is like a cult. The lecturers have information amongst themselves. They talk about the girls they have slept with and the ones they plan to sleep with. It has been going on for years,” she said. When sought the reaction of the UNILAG Head of the Department of English, Professor Hope Eghagha on the allegation of perpetual sexual exploitation against his members of staff, he declined comments about that. “The university is handling it,” he said. Professor Awonusi admitted that he was the one in the pictures in circulation online but stated that it was a product of a failed blackmail. When had a phone interview with him about it, he said, “I’m aware of it. It is an instrument of blackmail.” He also recounted how the pictures got into the hands of the female student since 2015. “There was a time in 2015 I lost my phone. I was using it to take selfies and all of that only to find out later that the girl must have stolen it. It was from my phone that she extracted some of my personal pictures,” he said. According to him, the lady was a third class candidate in the Department of English. He said she approached him with the pictures with which she was using as a bait for him to influence her CGPA upgrade to either a Second Class Lower or a Second Class Upper. He was angered by such a demand. “She now said, ‘Look sir, I have to pass 2:2 or 2:1.’ She is in Third Class. I said, ‘What has that got to do with me?’ I was really angry about that,” he said. Awonusi revealed that the said student did not fail any of the “two or three courses” he taught back then. He said that she had a B in his Advanced Phonology course, which she took back then. “She now sent this thing (the nude pictures) to me that if you don’t do so, so and so, she would send those photographs she had to bloggers and all of that.” Professor Awonusi told this EduCeleb reporter of the step he took following the incidence.