Ebizi Eradiri, the first female first-class law graduate from the Bayelsa State-owned Niger Delta University, claimed on Wednesday that some randy lecturers almost derailed her from her target to emerge tops.

Eradiri, who repeated the same feat at the Nigerian Law School, spoke during a homecoming reception tagged ‘#Schoolnobescam’ held in her honour by the Sele Eradiri Foundation in collaboration with other non-governmental organisations in Yenagoa.

The state Governor, Douye Diri, had on Monday formally received the Bayelsa-born first-class female lawyer, and announced the award of automatic scholarship for her masters and doctorate degrees in any university in Nigeria or abroad.

Diri equally offered her automatic employment to lecture at the law faculty of the NDU and also declared her as the New Face of the Bayelsa Girl Child with a view to making her a role model for young girls in the state and the entire Ijaw nation to emulate.

Narrating her ordeal, Eradiri said fervent prayers, hard work and dedication to studies were the weapons she used in surmounting the frustration from some sex-for-marks lecturers to attain the feat of becoming the first female student to graduate from the NDU law faculty with a first class.

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 it’s 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.”

According to her, the lowest grade she had during her university days was a ‘C’ which was given to her with malice by a particular lecturer, who insisted on having sexual intercourse with her, adding that “I knew what I wrote but he gave me a ‘C’. I know I mean.”

Eradiri promised to deploy her appointment as the New Face of the Bayelsa Girl Child by Governor Diri as a corporate mentorship platform to propagate reading culture among the young ones in the state.

The convener of the homecoming event in honour of Ebizi, Ebiekure Eardiri, explained that the hashtag ‘Schoolnobescam’ initiative was designed to disabuse the minds of youths and set a new path for generational leaders to emerge through dedicated studies and education using the female first-class lawyer as a role model.