Bosun Tijani’s ministerial nomination has triggered a moral, emotional and logical debate in Nigeria’s tech space.
Tijani, co-founder and CEO of Co-creative Hub (CcHub) last week was named one of the ministerial nominees in President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s cabinet. Making the second batch of the nominees list forwarded to the Senate on Wednesday, Tijani instantly became a hot topic on Nigerian Twitter.
Following the “internet never forgets” episode that laced his screening where old tweets of him criticizing the current President and the tag of being a Nigerian were discovered, his acceptance of the ministerial nomination became a matter of contention among his colleagues, proteges and the tech savvy public.
On one side of the table is the idea of him not accepting the nomination at all, after having so harshly criticized the same government, especially since the wrongs he pointed at have not been corrected.
Fisayo Soyombo, on this side of the divide expressed his opinion boldly in a post on his X(Twitter) page where he pitched the “walk away” idea.
The point here is, ‘why join the same system you criticized?’
Why stand before the same senate you have put in a ‘no good box’ to be screened and judged worthy or unworthy of the system you tagged bad? Why not just turn down the offer? Like BudgIt founder, Seun Onigbinde who in 2019 resigned after being appointed Technical adviser in the Ministry of Budget & National Planning. While Onigbinde has since hailed Tijani as a father figure, recalling an old post on his medium page dedicated to Tijani, narratives persist.
The other school of thought posits that Tijani did the right thing by accepting the nomination.
Here, the idea is, “good people should take the chance to make a change if or when offered.” They also argue that we have walked away enough times. Some insist that, for someone of Tijani’s calibre, his credentials show the level at which he can perform. Tijani’s intellectual capacity can not be gain said and he will do well in separating working for the nation versus for the government.
To this, Soyombo argues, “Good people have to serve within an enabling environment otherwise, it’s a monumental waste of time and reckless risk of hard-earned reputation. An appointee can NEVER out-serve his boss(es).”
Tijani’s apology before the Senate over his earlier tweets may poke at how strong he will be with his ideas as a minister and whether he will be able to push past a resisting “Council of elders.” On the bright side, Onigbinde assured that contrary to his own experience in 2019, the current Senate leader, Godswill Akpabio gave Tijani a soft landing which may be a sign of camaraderie when work begins.
A defense of the tweets would have projected strength of will, and shown a man who is bold to stand for what he believes. An apology on the other hand is not doing much good for the picture.
The question now is, is this about to be a royal rumble of the system nebulizing its few good men or is the tech community on the brink of making Nigeria a truly great nation through the active participation of one of our own in government?