Ngige’s Scholarship Awards, Greek Gift –Umeh

                  

National Chairman of All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), Victor Umeh, has criticised Senator Chris Ngige for awarding scholarship to students in secondary and tertiary institutions in Anambra Central Senatorial District, four months to the end of his tenure, describing the gesture as a fraud and Greek gift.

Umeh, who will likely square up with Ngige for the Anambra Senatorial District in the Senate next year, all things being equal, wondered what Ngige had been doing in the last three and a half years he had been in the Senate only to remember now that there are indigent students in his senatorial district, who deserve scholarship.

Umeh, who spoke to journalists on Saturday, was angry that Ngige went on to publish the names in newspapers, saying he himself had offered scholarships to hundreds of people in the last seven years, but has not advertised their names in the media.

This is because, according to him, it is assistance given to indigent and poor people and does not deserve to be announced.

He said: “If you are helping the cause of a less privileged and indigent child, you don’t put it on the pages of the newspaper.

“It is an act of charity and corporal work of mercy; something you do as a matter of your faith and relationship with God.

“It is not for election, you go and advertise children’s names, barring them from receiving help from other people”.

Umeh said the gesture was partly to cover Ngige’s under representation of his Senatorial district in the past three and a half years, more so when primary and post primary education is free in Anambra State.

He stressed: “He gave people scholarship to secondary school. Who does not know we have free education in Anambra State? Is it not fraud?

“If you look at it, primary education is free in Anambra State, secondary education is free in Anambra State; then, if you go to tertiary education, he has just few names there. So, he is deceiving people”.

Umeh said, someone who is representing a people, should be honest, recalling that during the 2013 election debate, “when Ngige was asked what he had been able to do with the constituency project money of over N10 billion he drew from the Federal Government, he said he built VIP toilets.

“At that time, he didn’t know there were indigent students in Anambra Central Senatorial zone