The Naked Professor.

What a great pity that those who are able to look into the seeds of time and predict with mathematical accuracy which grain will grow and which will not, were not able to foresee the situation whereby a teacher's trajectory on the scale of values will take a sudden plunge from indispensability to expendability. The teaching profession in which its practitioners are charged with the duty and responsibility of not only imparting knowledge, but wisdom as well, to their wards, is one of the most respectable professions in the world. But, time after time again, experience has shown that what is often imparted at the end of the day is just pedantic knowledge, and not wisdom. This writer wonders how come no one ever hears wisdom when she stands on the corner of every street and at the centre of every market place wailing that the sweetness of a woman is the downfall of man. Not even the most knowledgeable professor in the world is wise enough to know this. Granted that the teacher is not wise enough to know that the only thing he is supposed to know is that he knows nothing, does that mean that whenever the possibility of infallibility presents itself as a character trait, the all-knowing teacher has to be sacrificed at the altar of extra-judicial manipulations?

One repays a teacher badly if one remains only a pupil, and a bad one at that. It is therefore meet that whenever windows of opportunities open to let such bad pupils into the good books of the almighty teacher, they have to resort to using what they have to get what they need. Such is the nature of the dramatic spectacle and spectacular drama that presented itself on cyberspace a couple of days ago. It was like watching the phony video of Diya kneeling down before the almighty Abacha and crying his heart out for allegedly planning a coup against his master. The opening scene showed a half-naked man sitting on a chair in great distress, with his face wreathed in the disguising smile men put on as a mask to conceal their secret agonies from the pitiless gaze of unsympathetic fellow creatures. The dishevelled man, an engineering professor had allegedly being bartering grades for sex with his students and had come for one more roll in the hay with a student who had offered him contractual and consensual sex before. The professor's crime was that he had reneged on his pledge to pass the student. To an unsuspecting and gullible mind, if that was what actually transpired between the professor and his student, then it was pay back time. But caution dictates that we should take a more than cursory look at the video and examine it with not only a telescope, but a microscope so that we are able to fathom the seemingly unfathomable pieces in this jigsaw puzzle.

If there was ever a contract, it is clear that something went wrong somewhere to lead to this comedy of errors. There was a breach of contract. A breach of promise ultimately leading to a breach of peace. Every human creature has a capacity for good and evil. Like Lucifer, who used to be an angel before his descent into the depths of moral depravity, we represent the unfathomable see-saw between light and darkness. Which way we tilt, is more often than not, dependent on the interplay of nature and nurture, and which of these plays a dominant part here is hard to say. What is clear however is that no law proscribing sexual activities between two consensual adults had been broken here; whether between teacher and student, master and servant, government and the governed, pastor and female laity, Adamu and Frank or Agnes and Iyabo.

What portrays this video as totally absurd and crass is the total lack of evidence to buttress the allegation that the professor ever slept with the student. There were no amorous scenes. No foreplay. No penalty kicks. No dribbles. No afterplay. The only thing our innocent ears were subjected to was hearsay. But our innocent eyes saw the look of anguish in the eyes of a man held against his will, forced to display his manhood before a coterie of paparazzis and made to sign a cheque under duress. It is even possible that the professor may have been kidnapped by the cultist students who were acting on the order of their female head, a whore, the kind of whore that wants her money up front and then jumps out of the window of the car leaving you naked in the driver's seat of a moving vehicle. All the telltales were there.

This is not the first time the evil of blackmail has been painted on the cyber canvas. We have seen it a number of times. They fill the pages of all history, ancient and modern, and they fill our cities, homes, universities, churches, corridors of power. In all these places, they put sex and money in everything. These are the only variables that are capable of rubbing the shine off the halo of honourable men, rendering their every action dishonourable and making the most rational of all creatures, less than honourable.

It is good to hear that the governor of Edo state has waded into the matter by asking the university authorities to set up a commission charged with investigating and ascertaining the circumstances surrounding this criminal display of jungle justice. Although the good it will do is debatable, it will do no harm especially if the culprits were brought to book. One thing though is clear: this is the genesis of a gender war! The naked professor should see no shame in his nudity. There is a haven for you in Europe where there abound enough nudist gardens and every naked and clothed soul just goes about soaking in the sun without much as a glance at the person sitting next to them.