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A former speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, has lamented the poor development of Nigeria when compared to other countries, including Kenya.
Yakubu Dogara blamed the country’s poor development on poor education and lack of investment in education by governments.
He said this while speaking, on Sunday, at the 50th Anniversary Celebration and Thanksgiving Service of Nakam Memorial School, Panyam, Mangu LGA, Plateau State.
Dogara, who chaired the event, emphasized that an educated mind will produce infrastructure and help in the development of every sector of society.
“If you are educated, even in the absence of infrastructure, the educated mind will produce the infrastructure that is lacking. Those that are educated will build the schools that we don’t have, they will build the roads and generate and distribute the electricity that we never have enough for domestic use and industrial production.
“As a matter of fact, the resources in this country are humongous, especially here on the Plateau. When we are talking about endowment by God, we have a lot of minerals buried beneath our earth surface but the truth is that we need education to bring them out,” Dogara said.
He noted that without qualitative education both human and natural resources would not achieve their potential.
“Where you don’t have qualitative education, both the human beings and the resources that are buried under your ground will decay. Unfortunately, that has been the case with Nigeria. But where you train your citizens and empower them with knowledge even in the absence of resources, they can turn their country into a first world.
“We’ve seen that with South Korea, we’ve seen it in several other countries, especially the Asian Tigers. Just as we were making our way here, we were lamenting about the fact that although Kenya doesn’t have our size in terms of population and they don’t have oil and much of the resources that we have here in Nigeria; it is shocking that Kenya’s budget is higher than that of Nigeria.
“That means Kenya has managed to build more wealth than Nigeria. Just go back home and think about that. Ponder hard as to why is it that the case. It may be because the literacy level in Kenya has gone very high up there, while in Nigeria, we are struggling to educate our citizens,” Dogara added.
The former House of Representatives Speaker urged governments at all levels to prioritize investment in education and human capital development as the surest way to lift Nigeria out of poverty.
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