Gbagauns: President Jonathan’s Grammatical Blunders During His Campaign Speeches

President Jonathan’s awkward grammatical miscues on the
campaign trail
Category: The politics of grammar Published on Sunday, 18
January 2015 05:00
Written by Farooq Kperogi (PhD) farooqkperogi@gmail.com
Before any smug philistine confronts me with the usual inane
retort that grammar is the least of Nigeria’s worries now, let me
state that this is a grammar column. On this page, I talk only about
grammar, language, and usage. Nothing else. That’s why the
column is called “Politics of Grammar.” My “Notes from Atlanta”
column in the Weekly Trust addresses broader, less restricted, and
more variegated subject-matters. So spare me the trite, tired tripe
about what I need to worry about-or about the fact that English
isn’t native to Nigeria.
Paying attention to the grammar of the president of a country isn’t
a trifling matter. It’s imperative in its own right. As I stated in my
January 27, 2013 column titled “president Goodluck Jonathan’s
Grammatical Boo-boos,” “the usage patterns of the elite of any
country--especially of the president, who is the most important
political and cultural figure in a country--tend to get naturalized and
imitated by the general population over time.” That’s why
presidents of countries are often trend-setters in the language
commonly used in the countries they govern.
That’s certainly true of the United States where presidents
routinely contribute to shaping the contours of the English
language. I am reading an exciting little book titled Words from the
White House: Words and Phrases Coined or Popularized by
America’s Presidents, which I will review for this column in the
coming weeks, that chronicles common words and phrases that
are now central to the lexical and idiomatic rhythm of the English,
but that were invented or made popular by American presidents
either deliberately or initially in error. A few examples mentioned in
the book are “normalcy,” “belittle,” “lengthy,” “military industrial
complex,” “lunatic fringe,” “dark horse,” “frazzle,” “manifest
destiny,” etc.
This election season, President Jonathan has been particularly
hard on the English language.It’s like he’s on a rampage, on a
linguistic murderous rage. Poor English! Well, see below some of
the president’s grammatical slip-ups that stuck out like a sore
thumb.
1. “Senior citizen.” Apparently, the president thinks “senior citizen”
is synonymous with “(elder) statesman.” He is wrong. But, first,
the context.
Smarting from recent vicious attacks on him by former President
Obasanjo, President Jonathan couldn’t wait to hit back at his
former benefactor. So, on January 7, 2014, when Northern Elders’
Council chairman Tanko Yakassai led members of his group to the
Aso Rock Presidential Villa, President Jonathan seized the moment
to strip Obasanjo of his “senior citizen” status and to demote him
to a mere “motor park tout.”
“And your commitment to ensure we live in peace and harmony
that is what citizens especially our senior citizens should do just
like you have been doing,” President Jonathan told Yakassai.
“Some people call themselves statesmen but they are not
statesmen; they are just ordinary politicians. For you to be a
statesman, it is not because you have occupied a big office before
but the question is what are you bringing to bear?
“Some people are hiding under some cloaks, some big names and
creating a lot of problems in this country, making provocative
statements in this country-statements that will set this country
ablaze and you tell me you are a senior citizen.You are not a
senior citizen. You can never be. You are ordinary motor park tout
because if you are a senior citizen you will act like one.”
People don’t become “senior citizens” through a presidential
imprimatur-and they certainly don’t stop being “senior citizens” on
account of a petulantly tempestuous presidential
animadversion.“Senior citizen” is merely a euphemistic expression
for an old person. Most dictionaries define a senior citizen as any
person who is 65 years and older. Obasanjo is officially over 70
years old. That makes him a senior citizen. So when Jonathan
said, “You are not a senior citizen. You can never be ,” he clearly
had no clue what he was talking about. Senior citizenship isn’t an
earned title; it’s invariably biological and chronological.
The term “senior citizen,” interestingly, first emerged in America in
1938 during campaigns for the country’s midterm elections which
saw President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Democratic Party losing 72
seats in the House of Representatives and 7 seats in the Senate
but still managing to maintain control of the Congress. “Senior
citizens” was used euphemistically to refer to old Americans
whose votes the Republican and Democratic parties courted
aggressively. The term later crossed over to British English-and to
other varieties of English. American English speakers now just say
“senior(s)” instead of “citizen citizen(s),” although “senior citizen
(s)” still appears in America’s informal and formal registers.
British English speakers also use the term “golden ager” as an
alternative to “senior citizen.”
2. “Motor park tout.” The president also called Obasanjo a “motor
park tout.” That is problematic, if excusable, phraseology. In
Nigerian English “motor park touts” are people who earn a living by
soliciting passengers for commercial transport drivers at “motor
parks” (another uniquely Nigerian English expression, as I pointed
out in my April 27, 2014 column titled “Q and A on Nigerian English
Expressions and Other Usage Concerns”)
They are paid a token for every passenger they send to drivers,
and have a reputation for being aggressive, crude, vulgar,
untutored, and uncouth. So when Nigerians describe somebody as
a “motor park tout” they usually mean such a person is tastelessly
indecent or lacking refinement. That was the sense of the term
President Goodluck Jonathan had in mind when he obliquely
insulted former President Olusegun Obasanjo as a “motor park
tout” for being openly critical of his administration.
This usage will puzzle many native English speakers. In Standard
English, especially in Standard British English, a tout is understood
as a person “who advertises for customers in an especially brazen
way.” That sense appears consistent with Nigerian “motor park
touts” who often pester potential passengers in an annoyingly
aggressive manner. In British English a tout can also mean a
person who buys things, usually tickets for an event, and resells
them to people at a price several times higher than the original.
American English speakers call such a person a “scalper.”
In Irish and Scottish English, a tout has a completely different
meaning. It is used to refer to someone who betrays his group
members by sharing their confidential information with the police
or other authority. American English speakers also use tout,
usually “le tout,” to refer to the social, political, and cultural elite of
a city, as in “le tout Abuja admired him.” This sense of the term is
derived from French where “le tout Paris,” which literally means
“all of Paris,” is used to refer to the upper crust of the Parisian
society.
It appears that when Nigerian English speakers call people “touts”
they usually mean “thugs.”
3. “How much did Jim Nwobodo stole?” During a campaign stop in
Enugu, the president was reported to have uttered the following
cringe-worthy grammatical howlers: “How much did Jim Nwobodo
stole? Money not up to the price of a Peugeot and Buhari regime
send him to jail. Is that good enough?”
In English grammar when the base form of a verb (which is “steal”
in President Jonathan’s quoted statement above) is preceded by
an auxiliary verb (such as “did,” “might,” “should,” etc.) the base
form of the verb is never inflected for tense. In other words, when
“did” comes before a main verb in a sentence, the main verb
always remains in the present tense.
Examples: “What did he say to you?” “Did he say anything to you?”
“When I saw her last year, I didn’t like her.” “He did come to my
house yesterday.” As you can see, the main verbs in the examples
(“say,” “like,” and “come”) are not marked for past tense. So “how
much did Jim Nwobodo stole?” should be “how much did Jim
Nwobodo steal?” That’s a basic grammar rule that is taught in
primary and secondary schools in Nigeria and the rest of the
English-speaking world.
But while the president added an unnecessary past tense to a verb
that was preceded by an auxiliary verb, he neglected to mark a
main verb for past tense when he was supposed to. He said,
“Buhari regime send him to jail.” That should properly be “[the]
Buhari regime sent him to jail.” Or “the Buhari regime did send him
to jail."