By SIMON UTEBOR, Yenagoa
A Bayelsa State-born female lawyer, Miss Ebizi Eradiri, who graduated with first-class honours from the Niger Delta University, Amassoma, and repeated the same feat at the Nigerian Law School, has narrated how she was almost frustrated by some randy lecturers in the university.
She made the revelation Wednesday in Yenagoa, the Bayelsa State capital, during a reception organised in her honour by a non-governmental organisation, Sele Eradiri Foundation, in collaboration with other NGOs with the tagged, ‘#Schoolnobescam.’
According to the young lawyer, but for prayers, hard work and dedication, she would not have attained the unprecedented feat of becoming the first female student to graduate from the NDU Faculty of Law with a First Class.
On how she was able to overcome the challenge of lecturers frustrating students, especially the girl child, she said: “l would say it’s through prayers. Secondly, l would say it’s the way l kept myself.
“I was very conscious of my dressing, which enabled me to get the best dressed female student in the Faculty of Law, NDU, in the year l was graduating. I made sure I didn’t wear skimpy things that would expose sensitive parts of my body.
“I felt that was the starting point for me not to even attract the wrong lecturers to myself. I would say its prayer because there was a time when we had a borrowed course and a particular lecturer was trying to do something funny.
“When I sensed it from that particular lecturer in the first semester, l had to call home and told them what was going on and we all prayed and prayed.
“At some point, l had to escalate the issue to my HoD and told her what the lecturer was doing and she had to call him and warned him. These are some of the challenges the girl child is likely to face but through prayers and escalating it to the appropriate quarters, l think they can scale through that.”
She further revealed that the lowest grade she had during her university days was a ‘C’ which was given to her with malice by a particular lecturer who was bent on sleeping with her, stressing that ‘l knew what I wrote but he gave me a ‘C’. I know what I mean.”
Eradiri vowed to use her appointment as the New Face of the Bayelsa Girl Child by Governor Douye Diri as a corporate mentorship platform to inculcate reading culture in young Bayelsans.
However, members of the audience at the reception called on the state government to match words with action in ensuring that the promise made by the governor to sponsor Ebizi Eradiri through her Masters and Doctorate degrees in any university of her choice in the world was fulfilled.
Also speaking, the Convener of the Ebizi homecoming reception, Dr. Ebiekure Eradiri, said the ‘#Smchoolnobescam’ tag was initiated to change the current narrative about the youths and raise new generational leaders through intellectual prowess.
“We want our youths to begin to see education as the real thing for development, using Ebizi as a role model,” he added.
Recall that Governor Douye Diri had on Monday announced automatic scholarship to Eradiri for her master’s and a doctorate degree in any university in Nigeria or abroad.
The governor also offered the double first-class law graduate automatic employment to lecture at the NDU Faculty of Law. (The Nation)
