Court jails UNICAL professor for sexual harassment

The Federal High Court in Abuja has sentenced the suspended Dean of the Faculty of Law at the University of Calabar (UNICAL), Professor Cyril Ndifon, to five years in prison for sexually harassing female students.

Justice James Omotosho, in a judgement delivered on Monday, November 17, 2025, held that the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) was able to prove the evidence in counts one and two beyond reasonable doubt against the defendant.

Justice Omotosho sentenced Ndifon to two-year jail term in count one and five-year imprisonment in count two which must run concurrently.

The judge, however, discharged and acquitted Sunny Anyanwu, who was earlier a member of Ndifon ‘s team of lawyers, of the charges against him.

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He held that the ICPC was unable to link the offences in counts three and four in which Anyanwu’s name appeared to the co-defendant.

The ICPC had told the court Ndifon, while serving as the Dean of the Faculty of Law at UNICAL, harassed his female students by demanding explicit pictures from them.

Ndifon was alleged to have asked a female diploma student whose identity was replaced with the pseudonym ‘TJK’, to send him “pornographic, indecent and obscene photographs of herself” through WhatsApp chats.

The student was among the four witnesses the ICPC produced that testified before the court.

Allegations against the defendants bordered on sexual harassment, cybercrime, and attempting to pervert the course of justice.

The Star