There’s a viral footage of President Muhammadu Buhari staring at young entrepreneur and Paystack co-founder Ezra Olubi, during the National Awards Investiture ceremony which held at the International Conference Centre (ICC) in Abuja, on Tuesday, October 11.
Maybe the president’s gaze had to do with Olubi’s choice of attire on the day, the fact that he had lip gloss on, or because the 35-year-old entrepreneur didn’t bother to acknowledge that he had just received one of the nation’s highest awards (Officer of the Order of the Niger).
Or all of the above.
President Buhari looked shell-shocked and baffled; and for a few seconds, he had his mouth hanging open as Olubi breezed past him into the auditorium.
Olubi has this rather outlandish, garish, non-conformist dress sense that an older Buhari probably wouldn’t get, it has to be said.
Buhari’s look was probably that of a parent at a child, with the latter wondering where he got it wrong in raising the former.
For context, President Buhari isn’t exactly flavour of the month among Nigeria’s burgeoning young tech/social media savvy population (they call them techbros and techbabes these days), after he disparagingly referred to them as “lazy Nigerian youths” and after he banned social media platform Twitter in 2021.
President Buhari also continues to get a lot of stick from most young people who participated in the anti-police brutality protests (#EndSARS) of 2020, not least for the manner his government dealt with the protesters.
Quite a lot of reactions have trailed that awkward moment between Buhari and Olubi on Twitter. We’ve settled on a few:
“PMB could not believe his entire eyes,” wrote @DOlusegun with a laughter emoji.
At @Backarray said: “I was going to say something on Ezra Olubi’s dressing to the National Award but after seeing one person tell my brother @I_Am_Ilemona that “as you’re dressed accordingly, them give you award?”…I knew my opinion was not necessary. I refuse to be ridiculed on a Tuesday evening.
@LabiaMinoria quipped: “I am so sure that in Buhari’s entire life, he has never publicly come across someone like Ezra Olubi ….. he is perhaps wondering why he is presenting such a national award to him.”
Top Nigerian tech entrepreneurs, including the founder and CEO of MainOne, Funke Opeke, were among the 447 personalities honoured by the federal government on Tuesday.
The CEO of Flutterwave, Gbenga Agboola, and co-founder of Paystack, Shola Akinlade, were also honoured.
In 2020, American e-payment services company, Stripe, acquired Paystack–a Nigerian electronic payments startup–for over $200 million (N76 billion).
The acquisition was described as “the biggest startup acquisition to date to come out of Nigeria, as well as Stripe’s biggest acquisition to date anywhere.”
Why do you think President Buhari looked at Olubi that way?