President Muhammadu Buhari
Farooq, in an article for Daily Trust titled âNigerian Words and Expressions that are Untranslatable into Englishâ stated that the presidential statementâs âmortifying grammatical howlersâ almost derailed him from writing on the chosen topic for his weekly âPolitics of Grammarâ column.
The professor of Journalism & Emerging Media wrote, âIâd planned to write this article last week, but the egregiousness of the grammatical transgressions in President Muhammadu Buhariâs Democracy Day speech was too much to ignore. I was almost derailed again by the mortifying grammatical howlers in the presidentâs June 6 press statement that, among other things, announced June 12 as Nigeriaâs new Democracy Day.
âFrom indiscriminate capitalization, to incompetent use of articles, to inelegant, error-ridden phraseology, to misuse of words such as âdistractâ for âdetract,â and basic proofreading errors, the letter was disappointingly subpar. It would get an âFâ if a WAEC examiner in English were to grade it. We wail with distress and in national self-pity every year over mass failure in English in school certificate exams, but our presidentâs official speeches and letters canât pass muster with WAEC examiners in English. What message does that send to our secondary school students? Well, thatâs not my preoccupation for now.â
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