The presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Bola Tinubu, has yet again gifted skit-makers and tik-tokers a Freudian slip for days.
Speaking at the 7th edition of the Kaduna Investment Summit, Tinubu pleaded with Kaduna Governor Nasir El-Rufai not to leave Nigeria for a PhD abroad after his tenure ends next year, because his vision for his state and nation could perish should he make the move.
Tinubu thereafter embarked on a slurry, incoherent, boring speech that praised El-Rufai for “turning rotten situations into bad ones.”
“I am openly begging Nasir El-Rufai not to run away for additional degree. There are a lot of educated relics. We are not going to let you run away. Your vision, creativity and resiliency (sic) in turning a rotten situation to a bad one is necessary at this critical time. That’s why we are here today,” Tinubu offered.
Quite what turning a rotten situation into a bad one would translate to in the real world, remains anyone’s guess, but it could connote jumping from frying pan into a fire–not exactly what Tinubu would have intended to convey in his speech.
A litany of gaffes, howlers
It is not the first time the septuagenarian has fumbled while delivering a public address; and his frequent gaffes have become meme materials for Nigeria’s creative sector.
Tinubu has repeatedly been called out for his goofs or verbal slips as he sets out his stall for a presidential run next Spring.
In January and April, the presidential candidate offered patently false claims that Permanent Voters’ Cards (PVCs) have expiry dates, eliciting a rebuke from electoral umpire, INEC.
In March of 2021, Tinubu apologised after saying he wanted 50 million youths–who will be fed corn, cassava and yam–to be conscripted into the Nigerian Army, as a way of stimulating a moribund economy, fighting insecurity and fixing the nation’s perennial unemployment challenge, in one fell swoop.
Tinubu’s panacea was met with stinging criticisms and mockery; as his suggested figure is one fourth of the Nigerian population and would outnumber any Armed Forces across the world by a wide margin.
Only recently, Tinubu said “young people tweet on WhatsApp,” an unknown social media lingo and technological impossibility at this time.
The 70-year-old former Governor of Lagos, who has stated that the nation’s number one job remains a lifelong ambition for him, has also looked unwell and unfit in public, stuttering through his speeches or mangling them outright, shivering as he canvasses support for his presidential bid; and reportedly peeing on himself at the palace of a traditional ruler.
“So if he wetted his Babariga, he would not cover it and would still move to lie flat to greet the Awujale of Ijebu-land in the full glare of everyone present?”, the Bola Ahmed Tinubu Support Group wrote in his defense in February.
A skeptical Nigerian populace jolted by decades of deja vu, continues to pose questions around Tinubu’s fitness for the Number One office in the land.