Founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg visited Nigeria and also went to Aso rock to see the President of Nigeria, Muhammadu Buhari.
However, to the surprise of many, he was in suit and not in his usual grey top.
Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo revealed the reason behind that in his statement below:
‘’Today we held the Finale of the Aso Villa Demo Day, 2016.
We are proud of the young men and women who heeded the call to participate in the first edition of the demo day. You all thought up ideas, innovations and technology solutions despite imperfect conditions, you and every young person like you are the heart and soul of our nation.
We are especially proud of the 30 finalists who scaled through the competition to the finale, we are blown away by your commitment and dedication.
Let me first say how truly excited we are to receive here today Mark Zuckerberg, (and from now on I will only call him Mark as everyone else does.) As you know Mark is a very informal person. I had asked him earlier why he wasn’t wearing his T-shirt but he assured me that that was just out of respect for the formality of coming to see the President.
But it was really exciting to have had Mark here with us today. I think that one of the great things that he has demonstrated is that it is possible to live your dreams; it is possible to make your dreams not just come true but come true so fabulously that you not only influence your environment but you influence the whole world.
Young people organized the Aso Villa Demo Day, all of them work for the government of Nigeria in one capacity or the other, aside from the private sector who have done such an excellent work and all of them are very young people. I want to thank them for the excellent work of putting this whole thing together.
Today, technology has created a level playing field; technology has made it possible for you to be seated somewhere in your office or living room to create wealth, to create connectivity, to create all manner of things across the world.
It is a new day, it is a completely new day and I think there is so much hope and there is so much that this generation of young people will do. And I am certainly looking forward to being a part of that. By the time I am 80 I hope that I will be in a position to have an App that enables me to follow very closely whatever all you people are doing seated somewhere in my village enjoying life.
To the 30 finalists, I certainly look forward to working with you as part of the government of Nigeria to ensure that all of our plans, all your talents and abilities are put to the best possible use and we support you all the way.
We are also looking forward to cooperating with Facebook. I am sure that in the next couple of months we will be working out the ways in which we can cooperate especially with connectivity and some of the great ideas that Mark has for improving connectivity in Africa. We are going to be working very closely with him so that in the next few months we are able to achieve something by way of increased connectivity for all of Africa’’