The wife of the President, Aisha Buhari, celebrated her daughter-in-law’s graduation from a United Kingdom university in a Facebook post yesterday.
Reactions have trailed the update as some civil society groups described the post as “insensitive”.
They also urged Mrs. Buhari to apologize to millions of Nigerian students stuck at home as the seven-month strike by the Academic Staff Union of Universities lingers.
Mrs. Buhari had posted a picture of herself, her son, Yusuf, and his wife, Zahra, with a caption, “Congratulations to Mrs. Zahra B. Buhari on your graduation with First Class Honors in Architectural Science. Wishing you all the best.”
In an interview with our correspondent on Tuesday, the spokesperson of the Southern Kaduna Peoples Union, Luka Binniyat, described the post as ill-timed and called on youths to demand an apology from Mrs. Buhari.
He said, “The action of the First Lady portrays the kind of arrogance, insensitivity, and lack of respect for the teeming Nigerian youths, especially university students who are under severe frustration because her husband has refused to do the needful.
“But she came out clearly to sneer at the other Nigeria youths by saying ‘we don’t care what you’re going through. Look, our children are already doing well, you can as well stay for decades at home. It will not affect our children.’ She symbolizes many other top functionaries of this government who have their children in similar schools.
“What the First Lady did is not only an assault on the sensibility of Nigerians. It is also an insult to the collective well-being of the future of our children. So, all well-meaning people should protest and ask that she give a full apology and that her husband must be forced to take the right actions to return children to school.”
