Embattled political science lecturer at the University of Ghana, Professor Ransford Gyampo has threatened to sue the BBC for defamation after he was cited in the “sex for grades” investigations carried out by BBC Africa Eye.
Though he had initially opted to “leave the matter to God,” he told Citi News that his lawyers convinced him to pursue legal action.
“My lawyers insist that we must teach them a lesson so tomorrow morning, they will see our defamatory suit against them. We will sue them,” he said.
The BBC wrote to Prof. Gyampo about two weeks ago for his comments for allegedly engaging in inappropriate actions as a lecturer but he argued that he did not cross any lines.
He said he explained the circumstances of the conversations with the undercover reporter to BBC and urged it not to “pick our conversations out of context.”
In excerpts of the video released by the BBC, Professor Gyampo allegedly persuaded an undercover reporter posing as a researcher to meet him at a mall where he was filmed making inappropriate demands like offering to marry her and asking to kiss her.
He insisted that there were “paymasters” behind the BBC Africa Eye exposé and that there were people trying to silence him.
“I am reliably informed that somebody has paid them to do this…otherwise, what is the sense in this. Not that I went to sleep with her or I went fondle her or I went to touch her. I didn’t do anything of that sort… If it is truly sexual harassment then the person involved must be my student.”
According to Prof. Gyampo, the girl wanted him to be her mentor and help with a paper on academic freedom in tertiary education.
They had a chat via text and she sent messages with two different phones, Prof. Gyampo recalled.
But he does not have the trail of messages available any longer.
“Unfortunately, I used a phone that had very low memory and so every time I have conversations, when I am going to sleep, I delete all my messages.”
A lecturer at the College of Education, Dr. Paul Kwame Butakor, was also caught up in the probe but he has denied the claims, according to the BBC report.
The documentary was commissioned in response to allegations of sexual harassment by lecturers from some tertiary institutions.
After initial interviews, BBC Africa Eye sent undercover journalists posing as students inside the University of Lagos and the University of Ghana.
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