As Ngozi Okonjo Iweala resumed as the Director-General of the World Trade Organization, she faces racial issues as a Switzerland newspaper tagged her as a grandmother.
Massive reactions have followed the newspaper article which was originally meant to create an awareness on the first woman to occupy the position of the Director-General of WTO.
Events turned against the newspaper as readers became unhappy with the headline ” This grandmother will be the new Chief of World Trade Organization” given to the article.
In an applogia released by the said newspaper” that also has an online platform, the editorial team expressed regrets on the absurd headline terming it as inappropriate and unsuitable.
The team apologized for the headline which was orchestrated by the numerous angry outcry of readers.
However, many are of the view that the apology holds no water as the author of the said article was declared not guilty of casting the headline.
According to the communique released on the 26 of February” The author of the article Jan Dirk Herbermann did not write this headline. We did not inform Mr. Herbermann of this headline.”
The communique, however, failed to point out who was responsible for the headline as the communique further stated that “The original headline that Mr. Herbermann drafted was :”For the first time an African woman moves to the Top of WTO” They argued that ” However, we the editors did not use this headline”.
Reacting to the said newspaper article on her Twitter handle, Ngozi Okonjo Iweala expressed gratitude to the voices of UN women leaders and the 124 ambassadors in Geneva who called out the racist and sexist remarks in this newspaper. She believed that it is ” important and timely that they apologized”.
Many of her followers, however, expressed dissatisfaction on the way the communique was presented as the apology only succeeded in paying lip service rather than accepting full blame for the erroneous headline.
