Supporters of the Labour Party presidential candidate, Peter Obi were on Tuesday shamefaced as Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the All Progressive Congress exposed their ignorance on technical environmental terms.
Tinubu had on Tuesday vowed to ‘recharge’ Lake Chad as he attempts to tackle food insecurity and cross-border terrorism in the country.
The APC flagbearer made the promise during the inauguration of the commercial production of crude oil and gas from the Kolmani Integrated Development Project.
“Each time we discuss the lack of food and the challenges of terrorism, we will talk about lake chad. Okay, let me assure you, if I am elected the president, I will recharge lake chad,” Tinubu said.
However, as nit-picking as Obidients have grown to be, they jumped on the word ‘recharge’ in the assumption that it was a goof from the former Lagos State governor, giving it a meaning similar to topping up an airtime on a phone.
Their ignorance was, however, exposed when environmental experts made rubbish of their mockery, schooling them to know that the word ‘recharge’ used by Tinubu is a befitting environmental technical term denoting the replenishment of the amount of water going into a (natural) water body.
Recall that Lake Chad has been on a recede having shrunk to 10 per cent of its original size with the development spiking food insufficiency and insecurity.
President Muhammadu Buhari had in 2021 committed to restoring the Lake as he sought to curb the illegal migration taking place therein.
Buhari was quoted as saying, ‘It is imperative that there be water transfer to the Lake Chad from the Congo Basin, so that the people can resume their normal lives,”
While praising Buhari for remaining focused, he vowed to continue from where the president stops in 2023 in bringing the Lake back to life.
In his manifesto, Tinubu also addressed the challenges facing the Lake committing to the “rehabilitation of the Lake Chad Basin ecosystem and other subnational economic systems affected by violent groups”.