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Nigerian-born professor, Uju Anya’s tweets on Queen Elizabeth II generate mixed reactions
A tweet by a Nigerian don, Professor Uju Anya, on the Queen of the United Kingdom, Queen Elizabeth II, has stirred mixed reactions across social media.
Anya, a lecturer at the Carnegie Mellon University, USA, hours before the Queen’s death was announced, tweeted, “I heard the chief monarch of a thieving raping genocidal empire is finally dying. May her pain be excruciating.”
The tweet which has now been deleted because it “violated the Twitter Rules” has garnered reactions from different people.
Reacting to the tweet, Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos said; “This is someone supposedly working to make the world better? I don’t think so. Wow.”
Anya in her response to Bezos said; “May everyone you and your merciless greed have harmed in this world remember you as fondly as I remember my colonizers.”
Below are some of the reactions to Maya’s tweet:
An Associate Professor, Ebony Elizabeth Thomas, stated; “Telling the colonized how they should feel about their colonizer’s health and wellness is like telling my people that we ought to worship the Confederacy.
“Respect the dead” when we’re all writing these Tweets in English. How’d that happen, hm? We just chose this language?”
Eugene Scott @Eugene_Scott said; “Real question for the “now is not the appropriate time to talk about the negative impact of colonialism” crowd:
“When is the appropriate time to talk about the negative impact of colonialism?”
Nsafoa’s Feminist Duck @YaaAsantewaaBa tweeted; “Reminder that Queen Elizabeth is not a remnant of colonial times. She was an active participant in colonialism. She actively tried to stop independence movements & she tried to keep newly independent colonies from leaving the commonwealth. The evil she did was enough”.
Meanwhile, Bashir Ahmad, a spokesman for Nigeria’s president, Muhammadu Buhari, tweeted; “Don’t know that Uju Anya until I saw some of her tweets for the first time on my timeline this evening, her tweets about late Queen Elizabeth II were so unfortunately unnecessary.”
Also, Carnegie Mellon University has dissociated itself from Uju Anya’s tweet. A statement from the university reads, “We do not condone the offensive and objectionable message posted by Uju Anya today on her personal social media account. Free expression is core to the mission of higher education; however, the views shared absolutely do not represent the values of the institution, nor the standard of discourse we seek to foster.”
