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”.
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