Former President Goodluck Jonathan spoke
at the Oxford Union of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom
on Monday, October 24th, 2016.
His focus of discussion was on the theme “Promoting Youth Entrepreneurship”.
The former president said he believed in
the Nigerian youth and indeed African Youths. He further mentioned
that his conviction was not only an emotional one, but one grounded in
his experience with youths from all over the continent.
That was why according to him, his
administration introduced initiatives and policies to enable Nigerian
youths take their own destinies in their hands.
Here are 18 key points from his speech.
1. I provided infrastructure in
primary, secondary and tertiary institutions and gave undergraduate
students financial assistance in the form of Bursary awards.
2. I started building two special post
primary schools for gifted and talented children. The relevance of the
gifted children school is obvious. For the talented children, the idea
is to develop their natural talents in addition to sound education so
that at graduation they can make a living from their God given talents
if they choose to do so.
3. We initiated a program to encourage
the best brains of the State. We selected through competitive entrance
examinations the most brilliant pupils in our primary schools and sent
them to the best secondary schools in the country.
4. The idea was for the State
Government to take care of the best brains from the post primary through
the tertiary level of their educational career and ensure that they
attend the best institutions anywhere in the world. It was designed for a
minimum of 100 pupils to be selected for this program annually. I left
the State after one year and five months to contest election as the Vice
President, and therefore could not see the idea through.
5. I launched a similar program on
assumption of office as president called the Presidential Special
Scholarship Scheme for Innovation and Development [PRESSID]. This scheme
nurtured a select cadre of professionals, to serve as facilitators for
accelerated, sustainable, economic and technological advancement.
6. Each year, through competitive
examinations, we selected between 100-to-120 first class graduates and
sent them to the top universities in the world to study for higher
degrees. These students were drawn from various STEM disciplines. Let me
mention here that Oxford University was an integral part of this
program and indeed, a favourite for most of our applicants.
7. My administration also gave a series of educational incentives to university students across the country.
8. We established twelve conventional
Universities and a specialised Maritime University. To assist the
disadvantaged children in Northern Nigeria, we built 165 special schools
known as “Almajiri School” that integrated Islamic culture into Western
education.
9. The foundational theme of my
Administration was ‘The Transformation Agenda’. It was conceived to
engage the latent potential in the entire nation, and to stimulate and
enable higher productivity. And this was also the foundation of our
youth development drive.
10. The Transformation Agenda sought to
address the problems of youth job creation, with emphasis not just in
getting our young citizens employed, but in assisting them in acquiring
the right skills, and providing the requisite support. This was to
enable them set up and run their own businesses; thereby becoming
employers of labour themselves.
11. My Administration came up with
various programs to encourage young entrepreneurs. The most popular is
the Youth Enterprise with Innovation in Nigeria “YouWIN”.
12. It was a unique intervention
launched in 2012, which targeted youth with unique business proposals in
startups and expansion of existing enterprises. YouWin is structured as
a competitive cyclic initiative which invites and reviews Business
Plans submitted by Youth. Young people who wanted to be entrepreneurs
were asked to submit their business proposals. The best business plans
were chosen based on relevance, profitability, demand and
practicability. The winners were trained and given grants.
13. We launched The Graduate
Internship Scheme ‘GIS’. The objective of this program was to provide
temporary work experience for fresh graduates, to enhance their capacity
to attract permanent jobs. Eligible graduates are posted to
corporations and companies in the private and public sectors. They
received practical training and mentorship for a one-year period, within
which remuneration is paid by the government. This enabled the young
graduates to acquire relevant experience.
14. We also increased the allowances
due to Youth Corp members by more than 100% in 2011. This was in line
with our policy of youth empowerment and development.
15. To ensure that the Nigerian youth
benefits massively in the ICT revolution, we created a special Ministry
of Communication Technology. We wanted the Nigerian Youth to be
self-employed and exploit the advantages of ICT. The Ministry, among
other things, improved broadband penetration, set up ICT incubation
centres in Lagos and Calabar.
16. The efforts of the Young software
engineers at the Lagos Co-Creation Hub (CC Hub) became so successful
that it did not only give birth to many thriving start-ups, but their
activities also attracted the attention of Facebook founder, Mark
Zuckerberg who chose it as his first stop during his first ever visit to
Africa.
17. We identified Nollywood as a
sector that can employ many young people. We provided a grant of $200m
and for the first time, Nollywood became a major contributor to our GDP.
In 2014, Nollywood contributed 1.4% to our GDP.
18. We encouraged our young people in
that sector. I was to launch a Fund to encourage sporting activities in
the Country but I had to bow out by 29th of May 2015. Nigeria has a crop
of talented youth but the nation has not properly keyed into the global
sports industry. The Fund would have been a catalyst to promoting the
Nigerian sports industry by promoting training, welfare of athletes and
manufacturing of sporting equipment among other things.
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