President Goodluck Jonathan on Sunday, March 1, 2015 pledged to include more young individuals in his administration if re-elected as President.
He made the remarks while answering questions from young business personalities at an interactive session tagged #MeetThePresident, put together by the Participate, Vote, Country (PVC) group at the Eko Hotel and Suites, Victoria Island, Lagos.
He recalled that former military Head of State, Yakubu Gowon became the country’s leader at the age of 33 while Diete Spliff became Governor of Old Rivers State at 28, stating that although the exposure level of the average Nigerian as at that time was minimal, he would make sure more youths are appointed by his administration as he believes that the next generation will take Nigeria to the moon.
At a follow up event at the same venue, where President Jonathan met with 5,000 Nigerian youths, he reiterated his stance on involving youths in the business of governance, saying: “The only thing that made me to become the President of Nigeria is because I went to school. That was why we made it a priority to establish 12 new universities in the past five years.
“The Asian Tigers (Malaysia, Indonesia and so on) are great because of small and medium enterprises. It is our mission to create new millionaires among you all through various youth empowerment policies,” the President said.
“At the federal level we have relatively high number of young people. My future administration will have even more.”
President Jonathan also promised to engage youths more often to be able to acquaint himself with the issues bothering them, even after his re-election.
