The Emir of Kano, Muhammadu Sanusi II has said that the people of the country have chosen to elect uneducated leaders across the different levels of government. He urged Nigerians to stop electing leaders with no educational qualification.
The monarch made this statement on Saturday at the 9th convocation ceremony of Nile Abuja, where he was conferred an honorary degree of Science alongside Lamidi Adeyemi III, the Alaafin of Oyo.
Emir Sanusi, the former governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) advised Nigerians to start voting leaders who are educated and know the value of education.
“We have to take an interest in the quality of our leaders and representatives, in the level of education. If you look around this country, at many levels of leadership, we have elected and we have chosen to elect people who do not have an education. And because they are not educated, they cannot give education.
“We need to lay more emphasis on the quality of people we elect to executive and legislative offices and we need to make sure that those to whom we entrust policy are themselves educated and know the value of education.
“Let us invest more in education and let us give up some of the privileges that we have, such as the trillions we are spending subsiding petroleum products. That money should go into educating our young people.
“We are spending too much money on roads and bridges and trains and too little money on educating our children. Let us educate these young people and they will build the roads, trains and the bridges. We do not need to invite the Chinese to do that for us.”
According to Sanusi, the yardstick of a government’s performance should not be roads and bridges.
“I do understand sometimes that if a governor does not build roads or bridges, he is seen as not having performed by the people.
“We build all these highways and there are more pedestrians on the highways than cars and those pedestrians are most often people without education and help. Development is first and foremost about people.”
