Cabinet: Nominee apologises over derogatory tweets

The past came to haunt ministerial nominee Dr Bosun Tijani yesterday as he faced the Senate for his screening.

A contrite Tijani apologised to the Red Chamber and Nigerians and said he acted in anger.

Some of the senators asked him whether he still stood by those tweets, one of which directly impugned the image of the country and another in which he labeled Senators as “morons.”

Tijani said the tweets were largely taken out of context and were made during times of tremendous frustration.

Senator Fatai Buhari (APC – Oyo North) referred him to one of the tweets in which he said: “Nigeria is a bloody expensive tag to have against your name. Leave patriotism for a minute – that tag is a bloody waste of energy. A second foreign passport isn’t sufficient to clean that ‘sin’.

The Senator then posed the question is that still your position or have you changed your mindset? Nigerians need to know.”

Tijani in response said that particular tweet was borne out of the frustration he went through while trying to get a visa from the Chinese Embassy.

He said thank you for asking that question, Senator Buhari, and I will want you to listen to me as if I am your son, because I will speak from my heart, because everything I say today can be proven.

I have spent the last 15 years of my life going across the world looking for people to support people who believe they can use technology to uplift this world.

Every time you get to the lobby of my offices, you will find an artwork and embedded in the centre of the artwork is the Nigeria flag.

In 2019, as a sequel to what I did with Google, the business I do with young people requires that they raise money, and their ability to raise money relies on investors from abroad, and I did everything possible to ensure that I built an office that is fully domiciled in Nigeria.

In the technology space, people hardly domicile their businesses in Nigeria, but I domiciled my business in Nigeria.

We decided to improve Nigeria’s opportunity to be able to raise more funds for Nigeria and we needed to do a tour of the whole world, and we didn’t just want to do it as Nigeria but as Africa.

So, I opened up 15 slots. This whole trip was paid for by Google, and nothing came to me. We gave eight of the slots to Nigerians because I have a second citizenship, which is a British passport.

I was in the UK and I was trying to apply to the Chinese Embassy because I do not need a passport to other countries of the world.

I got to the Chinese Embassy and they told me that it would take two days to get my Chinese visa, and I was very excited.

They asked me what I do and that I needed to provide my pay slip. I told them I run my business and they requested my bank account statement. I told them my business is fully domiciled in Nigeria.

The moment I told them my business was domiciled in Nigeria, the young man told me they had to do a check on me, which would take a minimum of two weeks.

In anger, I tweeted what you read, which was paraphrased wrongly, and now I have a taste of what the youths do to you as well. The tweet you read is just the first part of the tweet.

Tijani further pleaded with the lawmakers that he was only a victim of misinformation.

He added that the second part of the tweet explicitly read: “For us to lift this country, we must find a way to correct our image to project a positive image, because I don’t want my two young girls to grow up to experience the same thing.

What they have given you is the first screenshot which is convenient for them,” he said.

Senate Minority Leader, Simon Mwadkwon, asked Tijani to explain what he meant in one of his tweets where he referred to Senators as “morons.”

At this point, Senate Leader Bamidele rose to Tijani’s defence, saying the tweet in question reflected Tijani’s past position as a leader of the #ENDSARS protest and his age as a youth.

He said his own two daughters who were born  in the United Kingdom during his law practice there also joined the ENDSARS protest on their return to Nigeria to participate  in the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC).

He said he was sure that children of some of his colleagues also joined the protest at the time.

He asked his colleagues to see the nominee as a son who was nominated by Tinubu who had been accused of sending soldiers to shoot protesters at the Lekki Tollgate in Lagos.