16-year-old student accuses UTME invigilator of sexual harassment, petitions Senate

Chizitere Obioha, a 16-year-old student seeking admission into a higher Institution, has accused one of the invigilators for the recent Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) of sexually harassing her during the examination.

Chizitere, in a petition to the Senate Committee on Ethics, Privileges and Public Petitions, said an invigilator, identified as Mutiu Olayemi, requested her phone number during the examination and that she declined, and her result was withheld.

Chizitere’s father, Onyebuchi Obioha, petitioned the lawmakers for intervention for his daughter.

Chairman of the Committee, Neda Imasuen, presented the petition on the floor of the Senate last Tuesday.

While submitting the petition, Mr Imasuen, the senator representing Edo South, told the upper chamber that the invigilator attempted to befriend Chizitere during the examination but she declined, and after that, her result was withheld following an allegation that she was involved in examination malpractice.

The petition

In the petition, Mr Obioha said his daughter wrote the recent UTME exercise at Wisdom House CBT Centre at Ogba, Lagos, on 22 April at about noon.

He noted that when JAMB released the examination results, Chizitere’s result was withheld. When he enquired about it, the examination body claimed she was involved in examination malpractice.

Chizitere’s father said he complained about the outcome. Still, the examination body insisted his daughter engaged in malpractice, as indicated in the report submitted by the invigilators at the centre where she wrote the examination.

Sexual harassment

Mr Obioha specifically claimed that her daughter’s result was withheld because she refused to oblige to the invigilator’s sexual advancement.

He said that after the examination, the invigilator gave Chizitere a piece of paper containing his phone number and a note that she should call him.

“I want to bring to your notice a suspicion that we have relating to this case. We are very certain that our daughter is being punished for a crime she did not commit.

“When my daughter came out of the hall on that fateful exam day being the 22nd of April 2024, after she told me that the examination was good, she then handed a tiny piece of paper to me and said that a man in the hall gave it to her to call him after the exam.

“In her exact words, ‘he came around and looked at her name and said that her name was a beautiful name. He then left and came back almost when she was rounding up and dropped this piece of paper and asked her to call him afterwards. She decided to bring the paper to me,” the petition reads.

Chizitere’s father explained further that he collected the paper from her daughter and, after that, called the invigilator’s phone number to warn him to abstain from his daughter.

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He added that Chizitere’s mother also called the invigilator on the phone, warning him to stay away from their daughter.

“I called the number immediately and asked him why he gave a little girl of 16 years his number to call him. He immediately denied it and said that it was a wrong number. I checked the paper and told him that it was his number that he wrote that I called.

“He cut the line. When we got home, my daughter also told my wife who also placed a call to him and he denied again and also cut the line.

“I then sent a WhatsApp message the same day in the evening to him asking him to desist from this and should apologise. He did not respond. I have that message. I have also attached it here. The number is 08067366564. I checked Truecaller and the name that popped up was MUTIU OLAYEMI”.

Reaction

In a telephone interview with journalists on Sunday, Mr Olayemi denied handing over a piece of paper containing his phone number to Chizitere during the examination.

The invigilator confirmed he was a supervisor at the examination centre but insisted that he did not give any of the candidates his phone number.

“I didn’t ‘toast’ anybody during the examination or give my phone number to any candidate. I’m already in Abuja as directed by JAMB Abuja to defend myself ,” he said.

On the issue of the examination malpractice allegation, Mr Olayemi said he was not the one who wrote the report of examination malpractice against Chizitere.

He claimed the Resident Monitor wrote the report against Ms Chizitere.