Nigeria’s former president, Goodluck Jonathan, has urged African nations to improve security and education across the continent in order to promote development even as he said that poverty remains the bedrock of terrorism or crime.
Jonathan, speaking at the Geneva Press Club in Swizerland, also mentioned that poverty remains the bedrock of terrorism and crime.
In his words, “If you peruse the official UNESCO literacy rates by country, what you will find is that all of the top 10 most literate nations in the world are at peace, while almost all of the top 10 least literate nations in the world are in a state of either outright war or general insecurity.
”Lower education levels are linked to poverty and poverty is one of the chief causative factors of crime whether it is terrorism or militancy or felonies.
“With this at the back of my mind, I began the practice of giving education the highest sectoral allocation beginning with my very first budget as President in 2011,” he said.
He included that his policy while in office was to fight insecurity using counter-insurgency strategies, the military and for the long term he fought it using education as a tool.