BENIN, Federal Republic of Nigeria. Days after he insisted that he had no regret choosing the peer of late President Umar Yar’Adua and his running mate- Goodluck Jonathan, over other candidates itching to succeed him in 2003, former President Olusegun Obasanjo, on Friday, described the immediate past as a disaster.
Obasanjo, who said he rejected the other aspirants from his Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), because of their records on corruption, declared that former President Jonathan’s actions and inactions would continue to impact negatively on the aspiration of people from his South-South geo-political zone for several years to come.
Speaking during a question and answer session after delivering the 11th Convocation Lecture of Benson Idahosa University in Benin City, Edo State, Obasanjo recalled the Yoruba saying that “you can only help somebody to get a job, but you cannot help him do the job.”
The ex-President who spoke on: “Effective Education a Panacea for Societal Development and Transformation,” however, further justified his choice, noting that there is hardly anybody who got into a position without being helped by one or more persons.
“To become Nigeria’s Head of State, it was first of all my performance in the war front. Now if General Yakubu Gowon has not sent me to the war front during the civil war you won’t know whether I can perform or not.
“Now he sent me to the war front, I thank him for it and because I performed, we shared the credit, if I had failed, Gowon would not have shared the credit, he would not have shared the condemnation with me, I will be alone.
“Yes as I have said, I believe that opportunity that afforded itself in 2010 for somebody from the minority to on his own steam become the President of Nigeria, he (Jonathan) should never have lost the opportunity but what he did with it is entirely to him and don’t take that lightly, what he did or did not do with it will reflect for a long time on that part of the country. But nobody will be there who will not be helped but you voted for him, I was not the only one of 18 million voters who voted for him” he stressed.
On the lecture proper, the former president said the war on Boko Haram can only be won with proper education and enlightenment of the citizenry especially people from the region who are heavily impacted.
He pointed out that education as a moral enterprise was needed to re-engage, the issue of Boko Haram.
According to Obasanjo “President Buhari should tackle insurgency from the angle of morale education. If we are able to tackle Boko Haram with education in our schools, both in the social media that they use, we will dilute their messages and positively win their hearts and others who have been swayed by the jihadists messages”.
He however said that to succeed, there was need to use more of counter messages that are more appealing, truthful and as intense as those of the insurgents, adding that the capacity of all teachers would be strengthened to deliver such messages; morning and afternoon assemblies of our primary and secondary schools so that they will have a strong dose of such messages, while the airwaves and social media should also be saturated with such positive messages.
“Even if we defeat Boko Haram on the battle front, we need education to sustain the victory. Let me give you an insight, in 2010 there was a survey of education in Nigeria and among the six geo-political zones.
“The southwest was 79 per cent that are educated; the southeast followed with about 78 per cent in the northeast, where Boko Haram dominates, it is 19 per cent and that is one of the reasons people believe that Boko Haram was a menace waiting to happen and it doesn’t matter what we do, we have to reverse that trend maybe the situation has even gone worse in the last five years because people have moved out of school, some schools have been destroyed and we cannot fold our arms and say it is up to the northeast.
“Rather, it is up to all of us in Nigeria, we have to do what should be done to bring parity in the area of educatin across the length and breadth of the country”, Obasanjo declared.
When asked on the non-accessibility of private university to Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFUND), he said that as at the time the intervention agency was created, there were no private universities.
His words: “The truth is that if you are going to make it possible for private universities to access TETFUND then you have to change the law, you have to consider every aspect of the law that must be considered and I set up a committee to do that and what that committee did after I left, I will not be able to tell you but I do agree that private universities and other higher institutions should also be beneficiaries, even the issue of UBE, “I suspect most states from the Northeast did not pay their counterpart funds.”
Credit: Daily Independent (Nigeria)
