Ex-President Goodluck Jonathan has, Monday, said that he was never elected as Nigeria’s president to spread poverty but to generate and spread wealth.
Jonathan who spoke at the Oxford Union, with the theme ‘Fostering Youth Entrepreneurship, and succeeding US Secretary of State who spoke at the same event in May this year, said that only being entrepreneurial can completely cure poverty and not having a job or working for someone.
“I once said that I was not elected President of Nigeria to spread poverty; I was elected to generate and spread wealth.”
“My belief in this regard is that getting a job or being a worker cannot completely cure the disease of poverty. It is only your own business that can provide such security and give you the financial freedom you need to prosper.”
Dr. Jonathan, whose speech was streamed live, rhetorically queried his audience asking why some nations are rich and others remain poor.
”Why are some nations rich and some poor? Why do individuals that grow up in similar circumstances end up differently, with some as successes and others as failures?”
“Is the wealth of nations a result of geography, weather, culture, destiny, etc.? What could a leader do to effectively lift a people out of the depths of poverty and enable them to achieve prosperity?” asked Jonathan.
The former Nigerian leader talked about youth entrepreneurship programs his administration pioneered, saying that one of them, YouWIN, was a major plank of his job creation efforts.
“The motivation for this program is for young people to go into SMEs, create jobs for other young people with the expectation that some would grow to large scale businesses” Dr. Jonathan said.
He concluded his speech by giving a short brief of his achievements in the economic sphere, saying, “Under my watch, Nigeria was projected by CNN Money to be the third fastest growing economy in the world for the year 2015 and rated as the largest economy in Africa and the 23rd largest in the world by the World Bank and the IMF, with a GDP above half a Trillion US dollars.”
Previous speakers at the Oxford Union include the late King of Pop, Michael Jackson, Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, author of 48 laws of power, Robert Greene, the Dalai Lama, former British prime ministers Winston Churchill, Edward Heath, Margaret Thatcher and John Major. Others were Mother Teresa and former US presidents Richard Nixon (November 1978), Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton. Agency report
