A lecturer at the University of Ghana who was implicated in the BBC Africa Eye undercover documentary, Dr Paul Kwame Butakor, has vehemently described allegations levelled against him as baseless and unfounded, and aimed at lowering him in the estimation of right-thinking members of the society, especially the university where he lectures.
According to him, the necessary legal action will be pursued to vindicate him at the appropriate time.
In explaining his encounter with the journalist, Dr Butakor said he first saw the journalist known as Zara through one purported student called Freda Quaye, who had only sat in his first two classes of the course EDTE 204: Teaching and Learning of Mathematics in Senior High Schools, as a student who was auditing the course.
He indicated that the incident happened after one of his lectures in the second semester of the 2018-19 academic year when during the Introduction section of his lecture, one of the students who had attended the lecture was not from his Department, that is, Department of Teacher Education so he engaged the student just to know more about her.
Dr Butakor said that Freda Quaye told him that she was reading Economics but had interest in Teaching and Learning of Mathematics so he asked Freda Quaye to send him her Student Registration Number in order for him to add her to his Sakai Learning Platform where she could access his learning materials.
“The student (Freda Quaye) never brought her student registration details as requested. I also added her to a group for purposes of group assignments but she never participated in any of the group assignments nor no attended any of the group meetings. The said Freda Quaye was never sighted in the class again until one day when she approached me in the company of another lady whom she introduced to me only as Zara, an undergraduate student who needed some clarification and information about education courses at the Teacher Education Department for a possible career in Education. Pursuant to that requested I scheduled a meeting with her in the office," he said in a statement in response to some questions from the BBC Africa Eye team.
The statement further indicated that the second time Dr Butakor met Zara was when she visited his office as scheduled and expressed interest in pursuing Education as a programme and career for which she had come to his office to seek further information.
“I advised her and suggested she finishes with the undergraduate studies. Thereafter, she could undertake a Master of Arts (MA) in Education programme and continue from there if she finds it interesting. I went ahead to give her some details about the MA programme, as would any responsible lecturer, and gave her materials to read and revert if she was still interested,” the statement said.
Dr Butakor stated further that after a few days of their meeting in his office, his Head of Department asked faculty members to recommend qualified applicants for consideration for national service.
“There was an urgent need for members of the Department to recommend students they knew would be interested in doing national service with the department because as of that time, the department, being a young one (3 years), had no graduating final year students available for selection. This request imposed a duty on all members to find a suitable candidate to undertake National Service at the department due to the needs of the department at that time,” he added.
Dr Butakor stressed that he decided to encourage "Zara" to undertake her national service at the department in order to enable her to advance her career goals.
Read the full statement below
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