APC condems First Lady’s Korean varsity award

The All Progressives Congress (APC) has
described as the height of insensitivity, the
decision by First Lady Patience Jonathan to
receive an Honorary Doctorate award in South
Korea at a time Nigeria’s public universities are
shut due to strike.
Universities teachers’ strike over government’s
failure to honour an agreement of funding of
the institutions has entered its fourth month.
In a statement yesterday in Lagos by its
Interim National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai
Mohammed, the APC said: “if the First Lady
and her advisers had been perceptive enough,
they would have known that embarking on
such a jamboree at this time is an assault on
the sensibilities of Nigerians in general, and
the students who have been marooned at
home for almost four months in particular.
“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.
The APC described as “particularly interesting”,
the reasons given for the award of the
Honorary Doctorate to Dame Patience, which
is that “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,” the APC was quoted as
saying that “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 paralysed academic activities in
public universities,” the party said.
Mohammed added that “since charity begins at
home, the First Lady, as a mother and a
‘humanitarian’, would have done well to rally
women to put pressure on the government led
by her husband to quickly reach an agreement
that will end the long-drawn ASUU strike.
“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,” the APC added.