Globaltimes In recent times, the Presidential candidate of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Bola Ahmed Tinubu, has been dragged by many of his political opponents across various opposition parties. He was being dragged for committing blunders in his speeches, mostly, at his presidential campaign venues and other strategic public places.
Bola Tinubu, culled from Facebookhtt
However, there are two statements made by Tinubu, recently, which were considered to have been mistakenly misquoted to be slip of the tongue, and you may notice, after going through this article, that Tinubu did not commit blunders with those statements.
1) Recharge Lake Chad
At a recent outing, Tinubu promised to “recharge Lake Chad,” if he is elected as the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Unfortunately, his critics could not sit back and go through what he might have meant with the statement.
Lake Chad, culled from Twitter
His statement reads “each time we discussed the lack of food and terrorism, we will talk about Lake Chad, okay! Let me assure you, if I am elected President, I will recharge Lake Chad.”
Comprehensive Understanding of What Tinubu meant by Recharging Lake Chad
The Lake Chad is a sophisticated water body with economic relevance to, about 30 million, people living in four countries which surround the Lake. The countries include Nigeria, Chad, Cameroon and Niger.
Lake Chad and Neighboring countries, culled from Twitter
Nonetheless, the water in Lake Chad had been dwindling with serious negative economic effects on our dear country, Nigeria. The economic effects include economic deprivations, conflicts and insecurity; the main ones being Boko Haram insurgency and Banditry. That is where the word “recharging” comes from, and it simply means “transfer of water from other water bodies, for instance from the Congo Basin, to Lake Chad and so economic activities can be revived and with the recharging; farming, animal husbandry would resume in earnest, particularly in Nigeria and other neighboring countries.
Precisely, that is what Tinubu meant when he released the statement that was being misquoted as a slip of the tongue.
2) PDP Spent $16 billion on Electricity
At the Ebonyi State Presidential Rally of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Tinubu said and I quote “…they spent more than $16 billion, they forget that transmission line is a super highway for generated Electricity and Power. They could not even made a dime payment for a roasted corn for that electricity.”
Power Generation, culled from NTT
Painstakingly, I have read a lot of submissions, condemning this statement as a slip of the tongue. Let us analyse the statement for proper understanding.
Just like Atiku Abubakar regretted, at a 2019 interview with Kadaria Ahmed, that Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) led Federal Government of Nigeria, during Obasanjo’s administration when he was the Vice President, wasted over $16 billion on an unsuccessful bid to generate electricity for Nigerians, Tinubu was right and accurate, stating that they (PDP) spent over $16 billion on electricity generation.
I can, vividly, remember that after a successful generation of some megawatts of electricity by the private companies that took over the affair of power generation in Nigeria, some years ago, the major problem that is facing Nigerian from achieving regular power supply, today, is “the poor transmission channels” for the generated electricity. This often resulted into the loss of the generated electricity and epileptic power supply.
The transmission failure that is being faced by the companies that generate electricity connotes with what Tinubu meant when he said “…they forget that transmission line is a super highway for generated Electricity and Power…”
Power Transmission, culled from Business Day
This is to tell you that, there was a poor planning on how to efficiently transmit the generated power to the consumers at homes. Statistically, that is a “transportation problem” and just like the real transportation problems we face on congested interstate roads, like Lagos to Ibadan express road, East-West road, Kano to Kaduna road, etc, the best approach to solve the electricity transmission problem is to build a “super highway transmission” channels for the generated electricity. This is exactly what Tinubu meant when he said “…they forget that transmission line is a super highway for generated Electricity and Power…”
“…They could not even made a dime payment for a roasted corn for that electricity…”
Concisely, the above statement means, “wastage of money”. What he meant was simple as saying, out of the $16 billion PDP said they spent on power generation, PDP could not pay, even, that little amount of money that you can use to buy roasted corn on the said project. This means that PDP completely embezzled the $16 billion without spending, even any amount that you can use to buy roasted corn, on the power generation project, for which the money was budgeted.
