UniLag baptised!!!

Yeah! It sounds strange, isn't it? Not only humans get baptised. Institutions do too. And the priest? Goodluck Jonathan!

In what he perceived as honouring, thereby immortalising great heroes and martyrs of our democracy who served as catalysts for the emergence of civilian government in 1999., President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan surprisingly announced in a broadcast this morning to mark his one year in office, the renaming of University of Lagos to Moshood Abiola University.

This however, stirred the entire students of former UniLag into protests who viewed the act of the President as being unimpressive and dictatorial.

Some legal experts  be-that-as-it-may have lent their weight against the President's action.

Professor Itse Sagay, a constitutional lawyer and a Senior Advocate of Nigeria who praised the President for remembering to immortalise late MKO Abiola noted that he made a wrong choice of using UniLag for that. He said, "The president should be praised for his effort to immortalise Abiola. It was done out of good intention but he chose the wrong institution.

"UNILAG is too well established and has its own individual personality which will be difficult to overshadow". He furthermore suggested naming one of the nine federal universities being constructed by the government such. "This would have been less contentious because they are yet to be given any names and have no identity of their own unlike UNILAG", Sagay added.

Another, Mr. Bamidele Aturu, a human rights activist maintained that there's nothing wrong in the President's gesture. He stressed that the President has powers to rename UniLag but with the consent of the University Governing Council. He noted, "The Federal Government has the power to change the name of any of its institution but it must be done with approval of the university's council.

"If the UNILAG Council did not approve the name to be changed, then there will be a problem because it means that due process has not been followed".

Mr Wale Ogunade, President, Voters Awareness Initiative, a non-governmental organisation, said the proper way to honour Abiola would have been to recognise June 12 as a national holiday.

"MKO Abiola is not known to be an educationist. The best way to have honoured him is for the Federal Government to recognise June 12 as a national public holiday", he said.

But whatever be the case, I wish to use this medium to formally announce and bring to the notice of the public, that, whether Moshood Abiola University survives as the ultimate name of UniLag, the acronym "MAU" stands finally as the official acronym for Madonna University. Lol