Vice-President Kashim Shettima says Nigeria must treat education as a survival strategy, warning that an uneducated youthful population poses a threat to the nation.
Speaking in Lagos on Thursday while presiding over the launch of the Aliko Dangote Foundation’s N100 billion annual scholarship programme, Shettima stressed that the country’s future depends on its ability to rescue millions of children currently locked out of classrooms.
“We must treat education as a survival strategy. This is why our administration treats the national human capital development programme as a national emergency,” the vice-president said.
“We are bringing states, development partners, the private sector and civil society together to reclaim our destiny.
“Now is the time to recommit to building a future in which every Nigerian child has a fair shot at becoming the best version of themselves.
“Let us live our lives so that posterity will remember us not for the offices we held or the titles we bore.”
Shettima reiterated the federal government’s commitment to match private-sector efforts with sustained policy reforms.
He added that deliberate efforts must be made “to end a needless cycle of failure that has persisted for far too long.”
“A youthful population is a global asset only when it is educated. Without education, it becomes a threat to itself and to the nation that houses it. We come from a difficult history. Formal education was once treated as an intrusion,” he said.
“It was seen as an affliction. It was seen as a scheme to estrange children from their heritage. The residue of that suspicion, the gap that misunderstanding created, still weighs heavily upon our national progress.”
