‘I never wrote Marlians’ – Sam Adeyemi reacts to mix-up over post on Mali’s political crisis

Senior pastor of the Daystar Christian Centre, Sam Adeyemi, has reacted to the confusion that trailed his post on the political crisis in Mali.

If you can recall, Mali has been making the headlines over the political turbulence rocking the country which resulted in the resignation of President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, after a coup by M5, a resistance group.

Since Keita’s ouster, several delegations including President Muhammadu Buhari and Goodluck Jonathan, his predecessor, had visited the country with a view to restoring peace.

Weighing into happenings in the country in a post on his social media page on Tuesday, Adeyemi had enjoined Malians to work together towards building a foundation for the birth of a prosperous nation amid the country’s political upheavals.

“Malians have a unique opportunity to lay a new foundation for Mali to become a developed economy. Fervently hoping that citizens and the new leadership will have this vision, agree on the values that will make it achievable, and hold leadership accountable for the execution,” he wrote on Twitter.

His post, however, became the subject of heated discussions on the micro-blogging platform hours later, with many misinterpreting his use of Malians to mean ‘Marlians’, a term used to refer to followers of Naira Marley, a controversial singer.

In a follow-up tweet, the clergyman wondered why many users misunderstood his earlier post which was written in “plain language”.

“What is happening? I wrote ‘Malians’ in a tweet but some people saw ‘Marlians’. Our brains are biased when it comes to seeing,” he wrote.