Former President Goodluck
Jonathan, is currently in Malaysia for the World Peace Summit. In his
paper which he titled "Conscience Based Leadership: The Secret to
Global Peace and Security.’ Jonathan spoke of how he was inspired to lead
Nigeria by using his conscience dispassionately.
"Since you specifically
invited me to share my experience as a political leader and President, with the
forum, I will, therefore, like to mention some of the things I did in office,
to build a peaceful society. I can confidently say that in all my public life,
I was inspired to lead by conscience. This is in agreement with my personal
philosophy which I first proclaimed while running for the office of the
Governor of my home state Bayelsa in 2006, and re-echoed when I ran for the
office of the President of Nigeria in 2011 and 2015. Then, I made it clear that
my political ambition is not worth the blood of anybody. Ever since I said that
in November of 2006 in Yenagoa, capital of Bayelsa State, I have always lived
by it. This philosophy informed my 12 decision to concede the 2015 Presidential
election, even while the results were still being collated"
Speaking further, he said
"Let me give an example of one way I was inspired to lead by my
conscience. In Nigeria, there were 10.5 million (about 15% of the population)
out of school children who were of school age, going by UNICEF figures, as at
the time I became President. This was a disproportionate portion for my country
which was quite alarming, considering that many other developing nations with
much higher population had fewer numbers of out of school children. Over 80% of
these children for which majority are known as Almajiri came from the northern
part of Nigeria, where I recorded the least votes in the elections I contested.
Knowing the value of education, I could see that the ugly situation was
limiting the opportunities of these children and negatively affecting the
development of my country.
That was why my administration decided to build 165
Almajiri Integrated Model Schools which combined both western and Islamic
education in its curricula. They were designed to have significant impact in
reducing the number of out of school children, and opening the space for them
to dream like other kids in other parts of the nation. Constitutionally, the
Federal Government which I led was not obligated to build primary and secondary
schools. It is the 13 responsibility of the states and local governments. But I
believed that without providing education to these children, the country would
be fated to spend more money in fighting insecurity.
My administration took
education seriously because I saw education as the weapon with which we could
break the bond between illiteracy and crime levels. For instance, it was
obvious that Boko Haram terrorists were exploiting these innocent children in
the northern part of the country and using them as canon fodders to destabilize
the country. The situation was so awful that security reports indicated that
even parents were alleged to be giving out their innocent and illiterate
children to terrorists for suicide bombing.
I am a firm believer in
education, and just as I had said elsewhere, any nation that does not spend its
wealth in educating its youth will eventually spend that wealth to fight
insecurity. With my one and half years stay as the governor of my State,
Bayelsa, one of the remarkable things I tried to do then was to upgrade and
improve infrastructure in our educational institutions in my determination to
encourage more children to go to school, and stop them from taking to crimes. I
also revived the award of post primary school scholarship to bright students
from mainly the rural communities and sent them to the best 14 secondary
schools in Nigeria.
I introduced a concept of
building two specialized post-primary institutions as centres of excellence for
gifted and talented students. My aim was to build role models who will inspire
others in all the nooks and crannies of the state. I believed that one of the
most effective ways of discouraging restiveness and other crimes that are
prevalent in the Niger Delta, Nigeria’s seat of oil exploration, was to build
role models to give hope to other disenchanted youths. The whole idea was using
education to solve social and security problems in my country.
When I eventually became
President, I thought it was time to mainstream this programme to the centre, by
expanding the opportunities for qualitative education at all levels, to every
hardworking Nigerian youth. Throughout the time I was in office, education
enjoyed the highest sectoral allocation in the nation's budget. This was why we
were able to scale up our education programmes, especially at the tertiary
level, where there was an obvious need to address the challenge of insufficient
spaces for our youths.
We built 12 additional
conventional universities and two more specialised institutions including one
maritime university and a police university. With that, we expanded the opportunities
to educate our youth in relevant fields, and produce the manpower needs of our
economy. 15 For a nation to truly develop, it must cultivate a crop of manpower
that could revolutionise its technological advancement. For this reason, we
introduced the Presidential Special Scholarship Scheme for Innovation and
Development (PRESSID). With this programme, we offered scholarship to the best
of our first-class graduates from the technical disciplines, to embark on
further studies in the world’s leading universities.
The idea was to send them
to these institutions to acquire technical skills that are relevant to our
development goals. To reduce tension and conflict in the Niger Delta, we
equally implemented a programme for the training of the youths in different
disciplines, skills and technical vocations relevant to our economy, in many
local and foreign institutions".
Click to signup for FREE news updates, latest information and hottest gists everydayAdvertise on NigerianEye.com to reach thousands of our daily users
No comments
Post a Comment
Kindly drop a comment below.
(Comments are moderated. Clean comments will be approved immediately)
Advert Enquires - Reach out to us at NigerianEye@gmail.com