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By Godwin Chukwumaechi
A Port Harcourt-based book organisation, the August Meeting, has launched the Education Champions League, a competition among secondary schools in Port Harcourt, aimed at improving reading and writing among coming generations.
The launch was done during the organisation’s first quarter August Meeting held in Port Harcourt, the Rivers State capital.
The August Meeting is a book reading event during which the book ‘On A Platter Of Gold – How Jonathan Won and Lost Nigeria,” written by Bolaji Abdulahi, one-time federal Minister of Sports, was reviewed.
Also, two other titles; ‘Becoming A News Titan,’ by Chioma Ezenwafor, and ‘A Thousand Times On The Same Road,’ by China Acheru, both journalists and staff of CoolWazobiaInfo FM in Port Harcourt, were presented during the event.
In his remarks at the event, Kingsley Wali, convener of the August Meeting and arrowhead of the programme explained that the idea behind the Education Champions League was to promote literacy and intellectual engagement in Rivers State, other than politics and political bickering.
He said, “A society that doesn’t read dwells in ignorance, and ignorance is a very dangerous tool”.
He explained that the ECL, an Incorporated Trustee dedicated to fostering intellectual growth and community enrichment has announced that depending on the educational calendar of the state, the competition would start in April or May, firstly for secondary schools in Port Harcourt due to logistic reasons.
Wali announced that the first prize winner will take home a total of N10 million with 50 percent of the money going to the winning students, 25 percent to the school and 25 percent to furnish the school library.
He also announced that the organizers had secured sponsors for the initiative for the next three years adding that sponsors had keyed into noble initiative designed to boost literacy, intellectual competitive spirit among the younger generation.
Speaking to journalists after the book reading, Bolaji Abdulahi, stated that former President Goodluck Jonathan was never weak or clueless during his years in the saddle as Nigeria’s president.
The former minister and publicity secretary of the All Progressives Congress (2016-2018) disagreed with the widely held claims that the former president was weak and clueless but instead described him as a patriot.
He said: “Definitely he’s not weak, definitely he’s not clueless from my experience. The most important thing I know about him is that he’s very patriotic. As a patriot he’s also someone who’s careful about how he uses power. He understood the enormity of the powers of the president and he used to say that if he uses 30% of his power as president of Nigeria he will become a dictator.
“So he’s someone who is careful and who is also reluctant to hurt people. So because of his reluctance to hurt people, it’s possible that some will interpret it to mean that he’s clueless.
“Some of the things that he did at the time some other people have done the same and even worse. So I think he was just a victim of the kind of politics of that time. I think if he had been president at this time, he would probably have had a different approach”.
Abdullahi who also is the author of ‘Sweet Sixteen,’ described his latest book as the attempt of “a journalist trying to practice history.”
He added that as a minister he saw every event that played out from the point of view of a journalist and a technocrat, not a typical Nigerian politician and the irresistible urge to put pen on paper to document what he saw in Nigerian powerplay.
He stressed; “I saw everything in government from a news angle. But soon realized that I couldn’t report all that I saw in government. I saw myself mainly as a journalist and technocrat not as a politician and realized that I was excluding myself from the mainstream. But the journalistic instinct in me took a better part, so the book came forth”.
On his part, chairman of the occasion and former director-general of Nigeria Maritime, Administration and Safety Agency, NIMASA, Dr. Dakuku Peterside, commended organisers of the event and their plan to kickstart the Education Champions League.
He also extolled the former minister whom he referred to as, “one of the analytical journalists and writers of Nigerian print media for finding time to honour the event, (despite the Ramadan fast), and his courageous efforts in writing a book that gives insights into the power play that led to the Jonathan’s emergence to power and his eventual loss.
