Bola Tinubu’s recommendation of ‘agbado’ and ‘cassava’ diets for youths to be recruited into Nigeria’s armed forces shows he is forward thinking, his campaign spokesman Festus Keyamo asserts. 

At a Kano event to mark his 69th birthday on March 29, 2021, Mr Tinubu advised the federal government to recruit 50 million youths into the various security agencies to tackle worsening insecurity. 

“Recruit 50 million youths into the army, what will they eat? Cassava, corn, yam, will grow here,” Mr Tinubu said.

The statement has however become a butt of jokes among Nigerians who say the presidential hope is out of sync with current economic realities.

Mr Keyamo, in an interview with Trust TV, however, said the All Progressives Congress presidential candidate’s ‘agbado’, ‘cassava’ talk “is an euphemism for food security.”

“What should he talk about if he doesn’t talk about garri? Cassava is garri. Agbado is the major grain and you have a lot of by-products from agbado which is corn in Yoruba,” the spin doctor argued.

Since his appointment as campaign spokesman, Mr Keyamo has ramped up efforts to sell Mr Tinubu to Nigerian electorates, doing media rounds ceaselessly. 

Mr Keyamo, who is also a Minister of State for Labour and Employment under incumbent President Muhammadu Buhari once said Mr Tinubu when elected will run Nigeria on the same template as his current principal.

The statement irked many Nigerians who view the Buhari regime as a monumental failure on all indices of national development.

Mr Tinubu will run head to head in the 2023 elections with erstwhile ally Atiku Abubakar of the main opposition party PDP. 

Meanwhile, spokesman for the Atiku Abubakar presidential campaign team, Dino Melaye, in another interview, said no one can promote the APC and Mr Tinubu and not look stupid.

“Today the most difficult candidate to sell is any APC candidate whether at councilorship level or house of assembly level,” Mr Melaye said. “That is why you cannot defend Bola Tinubu, promote Bola Tinubu, and not look stupid. That was what happened to my brother and friend, Festus Keyamo.”