Former Nigerian Vice President Atiku Abubakar has strongly criticised undergraduates from public Universities in the West African country for not being able to "speak English in error-free manner".
According to him, students from his private secondary school, the American University of Nigeria (AUN) Academy, operating in Yola, Adamawa state were better than these undergraduates.
“I was in the University of Zik in Akwa in Anambra State on Wednesday on the invitation of the university. There is no student in public universities that can speak English in an error-free manner like the head boy of my secondary, who just finished addressing us now. When the head boy of AUN Academy, Abdullahi Sani, started speaking, I was thinking it is one of the lecturers in AUN, but only for him to introduce himself as the head boy of AUN Academy†he is reported to have said at  a surprise birthday party organised for him by the school.
Mr Abubakar served as the second elected Vice-President of Nigeria from 1999-2007 under Olusegun Obasanjo whom he felt out with in the second term and had to leave the ruling People's Democratic Party (PDP) for the Action Congress (AC) before he could contest the 2007 presidential elections.