Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, former President of Nigeria, has said that his administration came on board in order to lift Nigerians out of poverty not to further impoverished them. According to him, he said that the essence of the YOUWIN program he invented during his administration was to empower Nigerian youths who will take the nation to the moon.
Jonathan stated this in a speech he delivered "AT THE OXFORD UNION 24TH OCTOBER 2016."
His Words, "The essence of the program (YOUWIN) was to get a crop of youth over a period of time that will advance our course technologically. When I launched the program, I did mention that we were training young people that will take Nigeria to the moon.
"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.
"That was why my Administration introduced these initiatives and policies, to enable Nigeria’s youths take their own destinies in their hands.
"You can appreciate that there was a lot of emphasis on education during my time at the helm of both my State and my Nation. This is because the richest people today are those who develop ideas and commercialize them. Viable ideas can only come from educated minds, and money pursues ideas.
"My three flagship programmes ie the gifted and talented children schools in Bayelsa State, the Presidential Special Scholarship Scheme for Innovation and Development and the ICT Incubation Centers (Co-Creation Hub) were geared towards developing that calibre of youth.
We may not have been perfect, but we did our best, and our best yielded an era of unprecedented economic growth for Nigeria. A growth that proved the truism that a Nation’s wealth is not underneath the ground but between the ears of her people.
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 in the world by the World Bank and the IMF, with a GDP above half a Trillion US dollars.
