There are weightier matters that should engage African leaders more than colonial linguistic affinities, writes MONDAY PHILIPS EKPE The other day, President William Ruto of Kenya stood before an audience in faraway Italy and declared: ” Our education is good.

Our English is good.

We speak some of the best English in the world.

If you listen to a Nigerian speaking, you don’t know what they are saying; you need a translator…We have some of the best human capital anywhere in the world…” He was most probably in a light mood and wanted to thrill his listeners a bit.

The backlash that followed, especially from aggrieved Nigerians and other Africans who felt scandalised, made him reverse his earlier stance and said later that Nigeria was home to “excellent English”.

I’m not too sure if President Ruto has the requisite credentials to make such distinctions and judgments but attacking him now would be as misplaced as his own Freudian slip.

Even taking him head-on in this circumstance would be disingenuous.

But those who link Ruto’s gaffe directly to Nigeria’s President Bola Tinubu’s earlier ill-fated reference to the East African country at a public event may well be on point.

He assured his bewildered countrymen and women that they were “better off than those in Kenya and other African countries”.

Whatever purpose that expression was meant to serve, it didn’t go down well with both Nigerians and Kenyans.

For the former, their lives were in a huge mess such that comparing the dilemma with what obtained elsewhere, no matter how credible, would be insensitive and painful.

On their own part, the East Africans felt that for the leader of another country to ridicule them that way was abusive and provocative.

Whether Ruto seized the next available opportunity to hit back is left to conjectures.

Whichever side of the divide one belongs, it’ll be tough to ignore the leadership deficit exhibited by these two heads of some of Africa’s most strategic nations.

Apart from being Anglophone, Nigeria and Kenya have several other things in common including, quite unfortunately, despicable social and economic conditions.

Till now, Tinubu hasn’t explained the reasons for his conclusion and why he explicitly mentioned Kenya.

By assuming that the Nigerian people fared better, he unwittingly betrayed his disconnect with average Nigerians.

He may do well by investigating why, despite widespread reports about the underperformance of his beloved reforms, the citizens haven’t yet trooped to the streets, like their Kenyan counterparts, to forcefully demand transparency and accountability.

The findings should shock him.

Like Tinubu, Ruto appears confused about the best way to deliver on his mandate; to convince his people that enjoying the good life or achieving something close is still possible under his watch.

And, also, how to truly earn the appellation of ‘statesman’ who is capable of rallying everyone to buy into a country that can make progress or, at least, return to its glorious past.

It’s often advised that one should avoid putting the wrong foot forward as apologies could prove difficult or ineffective.

This is what has happened here.

A simple knowledge of the influence of host local languages on the domineering foreign ones would have saved....