JONATHAN: I WOULD HAVE BEEN A LOCAL CANOE BUILDER

I used to tell Nigerians that I come from a background people refer to as the Talakawas; I come from that level and I am here today talking to Alhaji Jimeta 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 had not gone to school, I wouldn’t have been here to talk to big people like these.

If you didn’t go to school, you wouldn’t have spoken the way you spoke, you would have looked for somebody to interpret. This is what I believe. 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 Government university.

Out of the 12 federal universities created, nine of them are in the North while three are in southern Nigeria. The only three states that had no federal university 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 talk about Almajiri education, we felt we must change. Luckily, we initiated it but now state governments are keying into it.

I know that it was education that liberated me. 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 Zamafara, Bayelsa, Kebbi or Delta state, they must be educated. I feel we must enter the North by aggression through education.