By Chris Ojeikere
Atiku Abubakar has promised to review the Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND) and consider debt forgiveness as an option, in the face of the harsh economic realities through which Nigerian students scrape out their education. Atiku Abubakar’s welfarist point of view is based on his unimpeachable conviction that every Nigerian child deserves quality education. The Waziri Adamawa measured interest and love for education is not a secret. He is a famous, foremost educational entrepreneur himself, and so knows where the shoes of Nigerian students pinch and what he is considering in what appears to be NELFUND’s Greek Gift!
Although, it is famously claimed that education is not cheap, the total implications of that popular saying was not always meant to be thought of in merchandisers’ value. Education is not cheap also to the extent of the intrinsic value it bestows on the individual, as well as the value an educated citizenry is to a nation.
This must be Atiku Abubakar’s reasoning. Atiku Abubakar supports government’s investment in such value as more of an obligation, than a business deal! He obviously regards it as a social service. He is correct!
Atiku Abubakar believes that it would be worth all the cost to the nation for a government to educate its young population, rather than herd them through a trapdoor into future debt burdens that will, in the long run, shackle their creative potentials. Atiku Abubakar must be thinking why not rather spend the resources that are wasted on endless overseas trips, wasted on purchases of unneeded Escalades, on egoistic convoys, on City boys notorious escapades, on wasted overseas failed lobbying, on propaganda inanities etc, to train Nigerian students out from the debt hook! After all, their parents are today drowned enough in bogus taxes and cruel tariffs. Plus, the children’s future have all been borrowed off in national debts by the current government anyway!
The scenario is that two future generations of Nigerians, parents and children have only one destiny to look forward to: paying debts incurred by President Bola Tinubu. What an ingenious way to Renew people’s hope! One must have a very special devil-inspired skill of sadism to call this: Hope Renewed!
But Atiku Abubakar is not smiling at such malevolent skill. He is thinking solutions! He is thinking of the future of Nigerian students and, indeed, their parents! This is one reason why to vote ATIKU ABUBAKAR in 2027 has moved away from just installing an opposition political party Candidate, to an obligation for national survival. It is now a matter of existential duty for all Nigerian students and school fees debtors to look for the Hand Shake Atiku Abubakar is extending on the ballot paper on January 16!
Chris Ojeikere, is the Edo State Coordinator of the Atikulate Movement.
