The Federal Government has withdrawn the Twitter plea made by the Ministry of Finance, Budget and National Planning demanding ventilators from billionaire Elon Musk to help treat Coronavirus patients in Nigeria.
Musk, the co-founder and CEO of Tesla tweeted on Thursday: “We have extra FDA-approved ventilators. We will ship to hospitals worldwide within Tesla delivery regions. Only requirement is that the vents are needed immediately for patients and not stored in a warehouse. Please me or @Tesla know.”
The Ministry of Finance, Budget and National Planning responded to the tweet, writing: “Dear @elonmusk @Tesla Federal Government of Nigeria needs support with 100-500 ventilators to assist with #Covid19 cases arising every day in Nigeria.”
Bashir Ahmad, President Buhari’s Personal Assistant on New Media, also begged Elon Musk to send ventilators to Nigeria, writing: “Hello Elon, I woke up to this your tweet all over the timeline, in this period of worldwide emergency getting ventilators is pretty hard no matter how much money you get, and that’s understandable! Nigeria, my dear country is in need. Kindly send 100s here, we really need them, thanks!”.
The public plea resulted in immediate backlash from Nigerians and the tweet shared by the Ministry of Finance has now been deleted.
The Special Adviser, Media and Communications to the minister, Yunusa Tanko Abdullahi, said in a statement that the tweet was not done with the permission of the minister.
He wrote: “An unauthorised post was made on the verified Twitter handle of the Federal Ministry of Finance, Budget and National Planning. The fact of the post is regrettable because of which it is brought down.
“We have made sure our internal processes are strengthened that such doesn’t happen again. The error is highly regrettable.”
Though the tweet shared by the Ministry of Finance has been deleted, Presidential aide Bashir Ahmad’s tweet is still up.
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