Former President Goodluck Jonathan Monday preached entrepreneurship as the way out of poverty.
Jonathan, who appears to enjoying rising international stature while being vilified at home by the party that succeeded his administration said that shaped the focus of his administration, whom he said was not elected to spread poverty but to generate and spread wealth.
He spoke in a speech at at the Oxford Union, with the theme ‘Fostering Youth Entrepreneurship, which attracts high profile international personalities.
US Secretary of State John Kerry spoke at the same event in May this year.
According to the former Nigerian president, 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.”
Jonathan speech was streamed live.
Jonathan in a series of rhetorical questions pondered why some nations are rich and others remain poor.
He said, 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?”
Citing one of youth entrepreneurship programmes initiated by his administration, YouWIN, the former president said it 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,”he said.
He recounted some of the successes of his administration, 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.”
The speech was streamed live via Dr. Jonathan’s Facebook page and will be hosted on the Oxford Union’s site. 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.
