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Saturday, August 23, 2025

Second honorary degree, a first

by

Bavita Gopaulchan
2108 days ago
20191115
President Paula-Mae Weekes presents executive chairman of the ANSA McAL Group of Companies, Norman Sabga with a honorary doctorate during the University of Trinidad and Tobago’s (UTT’s) graduation ceremony, at the Graduation Pavilion, UTT Campus, O’Meara Industrial Estate, Arima on Wednesday.

President Paula-Mae Weekes presents executive chairman of the ANSA McAL Group of Companies, Norman Sabga with a honorary doctorate during the University of Trinidad and Tobago’s (UTT’s) graduation ceremony, at the Graduation Pavilion, UTT Campus, O’Meara Industrial Estate, Arima on Wednesday.

ABRAHAM DIAZ

It’s of­ten said that his­to­ry does not re­peat it­self but, that was the case at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s (UTT’s) O’Meara Cam­pus on Wednes­day when ex­ec­u­tive chair­man of the Ansa Mcal Group, An­tho­ny Nor­man Sab­ga, was con­ferred a sec­ond hon­orary doc­tor­ate.

Sab­ga re­ceived an hon­orary doc­tor of laws in the ar­eas of busi­ness and en­tre­pre­neur­ship.

It’s the first time, UTT has con­ferred an hon­orary doc­tor­ate to some­one who re­ceived one from an­oth­er in­sti­tu­tion.

An hon­orary doc­tor­ate is an aca­d­e­m­ic de­gree for which a uni­ver­si­ty has waived the re­quire­ments, such as ma­tric­u­la­tion and the pass­ing of ex­ams.

The de­gree is of­ten con­ferred as a way of ho­n­our­ing a per­son’s con­tri­bu­tion to a spe­cif­ic field or to so­ci­ety.

In 2015, an hon­orary de­gree of Doc­tors of Law (LLD) was con­ferred on Dr Sab­ga by the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies along­side his fa­ther, the late An­tho­ny N Sab­ga, for his leg­endary con­tri­bu­tions in the sphere of en­tre­pre­neur­ship.

It was the first time an hon­orary doc­tor­ate was ever con­ferred to a fa­ther and son.

Head of the Eman­ci­pa­tion Sup­port Com­mit­tee, Khafra Kam­bon, was an­oth­er re­cip­i­ent of an hon­orary doc­tor­ate from UTT on Wednes­day.

He was con­ferred an hon­orary doc­tor of Hu­mane Let­ters in the ar­eas of cul­ture and civ­il ac­tivism.

In de­liv­er­ing re­marks, Kam­bon said the ho­n­our comes ex­act­ly 50 years af­ter re­ceiv­ing his bach­e­lor’s de­gree.

He said in­equal­i­ty across the coun­try has been in­creas­ing both at the lev­el of so­cial class and eth­nic­i­ty.

He point­ed to ar­eas he be­lieves have been chal­leng­ing this coun­try’s har­mo­ny in­clud­ing “cul­tur­al val­ues and mind­sets rep­re­sent­ing a trou­bling re­ver­sal of the psy­cho­log­i­cal gains of the black pow­er move­ment”.

Over the last sev­er­al years, Kam­bon said there has been a re­turn of the dis­par­age­ment of the African phe­no­type.

This he not­ed was re­cent­ly re­flect­ed when an afro-Trinida­di­an fe­male stu­dent of a school in Princes Town was dis­ci­plined for por­tray­ing her nat­ur­al hair.

He en­cour­aged the UTT grad­u­ates to look pass their aca­d­e­m­ic ca­pac­i­ties and con­scious­ly con­tribute to the coun­try’s de­vel­op­ment.

Ac­cord­ing to him, “in a coun­try filled with BSCs, MSCs and PHDs we are lack­ing some of the fun­da­men­tal el­e­ments nec­es­sary to de­vel­op a func­tion­al so­ci­ety that can over­come the lega­cies of colo­nial­ism”.


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