IBADAN, Nigeria (VOICE OF NAIJA)- US-based Nigerian professor, Uju Anya, has explained the reason for her controversial comment on the death of the Queen Elizabeth II of England.
Recall that Uju Anya, an ‘anti racist’ teacher and associate professor at the Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, sparked outrage after calling the ailing Queen the head of a ‘thieving, raping, genocidal empire’.
She wrote; ‘‘I heard the chief monarch of a thieving raping genocidal empire is finally dying. May her pain be excruciating.
“If anyone expects me to express anything but disdain for the monarch who supervised a government that sponsored the genocide that massacred and displaced half my family and the consequences of which those alive today are still trying to overcome, you can keep wishing upon a star.
“That wretched woman and her bloodthirsty throne have f***** generations of my ancestors on both sides of the family, and she supervised a government that sponsored the genocide my parents and siblings survived. May she die in agony.”
Twitter later removed the posts for violating their rules.
Uju’s tweets received mixed reactions including Jeff Bezos, who criticised her for making such an insensitive comment, while others praised her for being courageous enough to share her thoughts.
Journalist Piers Morgan also added: “You vile disgusting moron.”
One horrified user said: “Don’t expect that of you but do expect common decency, respect for such a loss. If you cannot give that at this time, you are a disgraceful of a human being.”
Another added: “You are just so uncouth and manner-less. You speak of someone who just passed with such a vile and disdaining comment.”
Students, faculty and other academics, however, showed their support for Carnegie Mellon linguistics professor Uju Anya with letters to the university and petition.
One of the letters aimed at the university’s hasty response to the professor’s tweets last week.
“We agree. Dr Anya certainly does not represent the values of Carnegie Mellon University. A university with unceded First Nations land and only nine Black tenured professors out of 477 cannot possibly share the same values as an African-Caribbean Black woman who is also an intersectional feminist, can it?”
Speaking further on her post in an interview with Marcie Cipriani of WTAE-TV, Uju said she is a child and sibling of “survivors of genocide” from 1967-1970.
She revealed that more than 3 million people were murdered when the Igbos tried to create a sovereign state., stressing that her family members died in the war which was facilitated by the British government.
The researcher said the United Kingdom’s support came through political cover, weapons, bombs, planes, military vehicles, and supplies.
She said: “My people endured a holocaust, which has shadowed our entire lives and continues to affect it because we’re still mourning incalculable losses and still rebuilding everything that was destroyed.”
The researcher in applied linguistics noted that the word colonizer is not foreign to her as she was born immediately after the Biafra war.
She insisted that conversations about those who died or were displaced, still, do not include kind or temperate sentiments about the perpetrators.