Ethics and integrity minister Fr Simon Lokodo has condemned suspended Makerere University researcher Dr Stella Nyanzi over her comments against first lady and education minister Janet Museveni.

Dr Nyanzi used what ethicists have termed “strong language” to criticise Janet and a government led by her husband for reneging on the promise to provide sanitary towels to school girls as the president promised during last year’s presidential campaigns.

In what seems like a war of insults, Lokodo has attacked Nyanzi. The ethics minister, and former cleric told NBS TV Monday morning: “Stella Nyanzi might be mentally derailed. Her attack towards the First Lady was overboard.”

He added that Stella should never have used such words in an attack against the first lady, suggesting that the researcher’s commentary was both childish and roguish.

Lokodo explained that Nyanzi’s criticism was a show of “lack of professionalism and [was a] degrading way of saying things even when she could be [having] some truth behind”.

“Even if Nyanzi had some dissatisfaction in what somebody had said but the way she reacted was very immature, unprofessional, uncivilised, I call it all names… Certainly having said that of the first lady was unbecoming of a mature person, a learned person, an educationist. It should not have gone that far,” Lokodo said.

He added: “The First Lady is Stella Nyanzi’s superior; she shouldn’t have used such words to describe her. If Stella Nyanzi had said this to any other woman, the weight of guilt would be less but not the First Lady.”