Ex-President Goodluck Jonathan has, Monday, said that he was never elected as Nigeria’s president to spread poverty but to generate and spread wealth.

Jonathan who spoke at the Oxford Union,
with the theme ‘Fostering Youth
Entrepreneurship, and succeeding US
Secretary of State who spoke at the same
event in May this year, said that 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.”
Dr. Jonathan, whose speech was streamed
live, rhetorically queried his audience asking
why some nations are rich and others
remain poor.
”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?” asked
Jonathan.
The former Nigerian leader talked about
youth entrepreneurship programs his
administration pioneered, saying that one of
them, YouWIN, 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” Dr.
Jonathan said.
He concluded his speech by giving a short
brief of his achievements in the economic
sphere, 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.