- President Tinubu shared his academic journey, highlighting the role of education in his success, and encouraged Nigerian students in India
- Tinubu emphasized harnessing Nigeria’s diversity for prosperity and discussed his presidency’s foreign policy focus on the diaspora
President Bola Tinubu claims to have excelled academically as a student.
The president, who is in India for the G-20 Summit, made the remarks during a meeting with Nigerians on Thursday evening.
According to Ajuri Ngelale, Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity, several Nigerian students studying in India attended the meeting.
Tinubu told the students that with hard work, honesty, determination, and a shift in mindset, they can achieve success in their respective fields.
He said:
Good education brought me here and I am happy to stand before you here as the President of Nigeria. I started small. I was a security guard. I was a tutor in school. I was a brilliant student. I joined Deloitte and was trained by one of the biggest accounting firms in the world, because of my education.
When I joined them, I asked them, do you have branches in Nigeria and they said, ‘we have a lot of clients that will take you, if you want to go home.’ That’s how I got to Exxon Mobil and was a very successful accountant, auditor-general, and treasurer, until I joined politics with a can-do attitude.
You can also do it; do not be despondent in any way. Nigeria is ready to accommodate all. It does not matter which part of Nigeria you are from.
The President called on Nigerians to harness the country’s rich diversity as a powerful tool for advancing prosperity and national development for the benefit of all citizens.
We are here to present a new future to you. A future of a country that is so rich, endowed, and highly populated. Very dynamic, unique in its culture, tradition, and ethnicity. That is what will make our prosperity possible, if only we can make use of our diversity for prosperity, he said.
President Tinubu also told the meeting that he ran for the highest office in the country because, despite the great human and natural resource wealth of the nation, the leadership and public sector management deficit in the country held Nigeria back from manifest destiny.
“We are not poor in knowledge. We are not poor in human resources. We are only poor in management and leadership, and that is why I ran for president, to help all of us mould the soul of our country in the right direction,” the President said.
The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Yusuf Tuggar, explained that President Tinubu’s foreign policy thrust included four Ds, with one of them being Diaspora, which focuses on improving the quality of services that Nigerians in the Diaspora receive at Nigerian Missions abroad.
“The issue of passport delays will be a thing of the past. You won’t have to wait indefinitely for your passports to be ready. Secondly, you are the first point of contact between Nigerians and other countries. We can’t grow beyond what our people project. That is why it is very important for you to project a consistently positive image of Nigeria online and off-line,” Tuggar said.
Earlier, Tony Elumelu, Chairman of Heirs Holdings, told pressmen that Nigeria was the best place to invest and that a bet on Nigerians is one of the best bets anyone can ever make, citing Nigerian success in all countries.
We believe in Africa, but especially in Nigeria. An investment in Nigeria promises a return that is scarcely found anywhere in the world and I do business across several continents, Elumelu said.