L
LequteMan
Guest
In a statement issued in Lagos on Wednesday by its Interim National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, the All Progressive Congress (APC) has condemned the decision of First Lady Patience Jonathan to receive an Honorary Doctorate award in far away South Korea, tagging it as insensitive.
According to PUNCH, the party said Dame Patience should have known that embarking on such a jamboree at this time was an assault on the sensibilities of Nigerians in general, and students who have been forsaken at home for 4 months due to the ongoing ASUU strike under the watch of her husband, President Goodluck Jonathan.
”In their eagerness to gobble up one spurious award after another, they forgot that if the Hansei University in South Korea had been shut by a strike because the government there has repudiated an agreement it willingly signed with the teachers, the institution would not have been able to give any honorary degree to anyone.
”A government that is unwilling to spend the nation’s resources on the education of its youth has no qualms about wasting the same resources for a junket by the First Lady and her cheerleaders halfway around the world for what is nothing more than an ego-massaging award,” it said.
According to APC, the reasons given for the award of the Honorary Doctorate to the First Lady was particularly interesting “She’s a humanitarian who has dedicated her life to working for the less privileged in Nigeria and Africa especially for women and children. Her vision as the defender of the poor in Nigeria fits into Hansei University’s motto of a practising Christian.”
”What the university forgot to add is that while the First Lady may have dedicated her life working for the less privileged in Nigeria, there is no indication that she and her husband are sparing any thought for the poor Nigerian students whose dreams for a better future have been put on hold by the long strike that has paralyzed academic activities in public universities,” the party said.
”It is instructive that the First Lady would rather corral some hapless women to the Eagle Square in Abuja to illegally campaign for her husband, in furtherance of her ‘humanitarian’ gesture, instead of leading a campaign of concerned mothers and ‘humanitarians’ to protest the deadlock in ending the strike in our public universities,” APC said.
