“Some people say Jonathan hates the north, I have heard that statement and I used to ask the Vice President, Namadi Sambo: they say I hate the north but you are here. I asked the National Security Adviser and my Principal Secretary the same thing. “In fact, my Principal Secretary now had been my Principal Secretary since I was the deputy governor. I never knew I was going to come here as Vice President not to talk of President. But I have known him since I was the deputy governor of Bayelsa State. “My Chief Detail, Yusuf from Borno State, has been with me since I was a deputy governor in Yenagoa and I see him as a good person and I have carried him along with me. So I had to ask how can somebody wake up and say I hate the north? I’m a Talakawa (down trodden) “I tell Nigerians I come from the down trodden; what you call the Talakawas. I come from that level and I am here today, talking to Alhaji Hassan Adamu because I went to school. And I said the only thing that can liberate an individual or a group of individuals is education. If I did not go to school, I wouldn’t have been here to talk to big people like this. “This is what I believe in. I don’t play politics with it. It has been my policy that I don’t play politics with education. “When I came on board I said even though as a country we have the policy on paper, every state must get a federal university. Of the 12 federal universities created, nine are in the north while three are in south. The only three states that had no federal universities were Bayelsa, Ebonyi and Ekiti. Those who were in charge of the university establishment were not fair. For us to liberate ourselves, we must go to school. If I hate the north would I have done that? “We talked about Almajiri’s education and felt we must change the system. Luckily, we initiated it but now some state governments are keying into it because I know that it was education that liberated me. My father and grand father were canoe builders “I would have been a local canoe builder like my father and grandfather. But I am here because of education and I feel if we must liberate Nigerian children, whether they are from Zamfara, Bayelsa, Kebbi, Delta, they must be educated. “I feel we must enter the north with aggression through education. Whenever we get the statistics of school dropouts, I feel unhappy. The number from states in the north, some are about 50 per cent, some even more. The last was up to 70 per cent. I said no, we must change this statistics. Somebody who hates the people cannot talk about educating the children because the people we are educating are the future leaders of this country.”- President Goodluck Jonathan
Posted on: Thu, 08 Jan 2015 05:59:34 +0000
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