Biden Thanks Tinubu For Releasing Tigran Gambaryan, Also Sympathizes Over Floods Impacting Nigerian
The Oasis Reporters
October 30, 2024
A Nigerian court has dropped all charges against Tigran Gambaryan, Binance’s head of financial crime compliance and a prominent former IRS investigator.
Gambaryan had been detained in Nigeria since February on money laundering and tax evasion charges.
In a tweet, US President Joe Biden said:
Earlier, I spoke with President Tinubu of Nigeria to express my condolences on the floods impacting his country and my appreciation for his leadership in securing the humanitarian release of Tigran Gambaryan.
We also spoke about the value of our partnership.
Follow link to X:
https://x.com/POTUS/status/1851385658516128244
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What came under the comment section was one made by an Elon Musk Parody Account, sarcastically asking Joe Biden:
Follow link to X:
https://x.com/ElonMuskAOC/status/1851385943049351472
“Why don’t you send them $100,000,000,000 like you did to Ukraine?”
Elon Musk Parody Account was being witty as usual with him, but the comments by Nigerians on the thread who probably thought it was the real Elon Musk account, a billionaire on his way to becoming a trillionaire through his knowledge based investments was astonishing.
Many did not want any money sent believing that it would go into the wrong hands and Nigerians would not benefit at all.
It’s cynicism at its highest level.
The real Elon Musk, a South African born American now by naturalization due partly by his deep engineering knowledge owns Twitter ( now known as X). He is also a space explorer and owner of Space X, a company that has launched uncountable number of Satellites into space for global Telecommunications. It is available in Nigeria, but one needs to cough out something in the region of 500,000 naira or more and recharging it monthly might gulp about 50,000 naira or more. But the reach is vast. Worthy investment, kind of. But the minimum wage in Nigeria ranges between 30,000 to 70,000 or even 85, 000 naira.
A bag of rice would cost someone about a two month salary at a go.
Being a multi billionaire, Elon Musk is deploying millions of dollars in support of his choice candidate, Republican Party candidate, Donald Trump. And he is putting his money where his support is.
Elon Musk also owns Neuralink. Another engineering firm that is building an interface between physics, engineering and biomedical science to give sight to the blind and this is creating real excitement the world over.
Elon Musk confessed that his extraordinary knowledge came from studies in schools and through reading widely.
In Nigeria, education seems to be going through difficult challenges with strikes by academic staff, commonplace. Even right now as this story is being told, Universities are paralyzed due to a strike over unpaid wages and allowances. Would such Universities then have the required funding for research and its outcomes ?
That is one reason why producing engineers in the mold of Elon Musk might be a tall order.
Greg Abolo
gregabolo@gmail.com
