The Presidential Election organized by the ‘ Nigeria Election Debate Group‘ held in Abuja on Sunday, 22nd March with participation from the current President Goodluck Jonathan and other candidates, but the APC presidential candidate, General Muhammadu Buhari was visibly absent.
Among other Presidential candidates present include: Remi Sonaiya from the KOWA Party , Chekwas Okorie from UPP, Godson Okoye from UDP and Martin Onovo from NCP.
GEJ during the debate explained that education is the responsibility of both states and the federal governments, adding that his administration supports the states through the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC).
“We all feel bad that no Nigerian university was ranked but we are working seriously to change the trend. We have equipped most of our universities through the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund). We are talking about infrastructure that has failed over the years but with the way we are going, in the next four years our universities will compete with other universities across the world,” he said.
President Jonathan also categorically touched on the contentious subject of corruption by requesting Nigerians not to condone the culture of corruption in the country by not celebrating people with ill-gotten wealth.
The President also said that his administration is gearing towards e-payment in the government system so as to reduce the opportunities for graft taking. The use of electronics in the government system over traditional means has been one of the successful method to weed out corrupt practices in many third world countries.
“Nigerians should change their mentality and condemn people with ill-gotten wealth. What we see is a situation where somebody gets wealth illegally and goes to his village and they give him a chieftaincy title.”
“In the government circle, we used the IPPIS; no more use of raw cash; it cuts across all sectors and in that case you stop people from stealing public fund.”
According to Jonathan, the government has tackled irregularities that characterized the supply of fertilizer to Nigerian farmers as well.
