Kenyan President William Ruto has sparked an international backlash after telling a diaspora gathering in Italy that Nigerians speaking English were incomprehensible and required a translator, while boasting that Kenyans spoke "some of the best English in the world." The remarks drew fierce criticism from Nigerians and other Africans online, who accused Ruto of demeaning a fellow African nation and displaying what many called a "colonial inferiority complex"; former Nigerian senator Shehu Sani pointedly noted that Ruto was mocking the English of a country that produced Nobel Prize-winning author Wole Soyinka. The episode highlights an ongoing rivalry between Africa's two largest economies, and comes weeks after Nigerian President Bola Tinubu himself provoked Kenyan anger by claiming Nigerians were "better off" than people in Kenya and other African countries.