Nigeria’s new Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Bosun Tijani, has been appointed Visiting Professor by University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. His appointment came just a few days before he was named as minister by President Bola Tinubu.
A visiting professor is a scholar from an institution who visits a host university to teach, lecture, or perform research on a topic for which the visitor is valued.
Tijani had applied to become a visiting adjunct professor at the university. His application was approved by the institution last week and the appointment, which is supposed to take effect in September 2023, is expected to last till 2026.
For posting messages on Twitter deemed to be unpatriotic and ‘insulting’ in 2019, Tijani, a tech guru, ran into a brick wall while undergoing ministerial screening at the Senate lately. His tweets during the EndSARS protest were also visited and some senators wanted to use them against his nomination. Fortunately for him, the likes of Senator Ishaku Abbo, representing Adamawa North Senatorial District defended him. Senator Solomon Adeola, representing Ogun West and the Senate Majority leader, Opeyemi Bamidele, defended Tijani while asking for forgiveness from the Senate Screening Committee so that his past record would not be used against him. Tijani also apologized for his past social media utterances which he revealed were made out of anger because of the frustrating situation he was going through then.
