Nigeria@64: Speaker Abbas distributes food items to Abuja IDPs

As part of activities marking Nigeria’s 64th Independence Anniversary and his 59th birthday, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Hon. Tajudeen Abbas on Tuesday, out a total of 1,000 bags of 10kg rice, 200 cartons of noodles, over 800 pieces of clothes to some Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in the Kabusa community in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).

The Speaker, who led a delegation comprising the Deputy Speaker, Hon. Benjamin Kalu; Chief Whip, Hon. Usman Kumo, and other members of the House to the IDPs’ camp, said he was moved by their plight.

He was supported by the National Commission for Refugees, Migrants and Internally Displaced Persons (NCFRMI) and the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA).

Also at the humanitarian ceremony, Speaker Abbas provided free medical services for IDPs with certain ailments.

Meanwhile, Speaker Abbas had earlier in the day hosted students from six public secondary schools in the FCT for an interaction, where he responded to questions from the students.

At the interaction, which lasted for over an hour, the Speaker said for Nigeria’s education sector to return to its glory days, adequate supervision and quality assurance in public schools must be prioritised by those tasked with the duties of running the sector.

He decried the largely unregulated and proliferation of private schools, which he said had led to an unacceptable decay in public schools across the country, saying “even teachers teaching in public schools now have their children in private schools because they don’t even believe in what they are doing for a living.”

He added: “When we were growing up, there was no such thing as private school because everyone, including the Emir, the Commissioner, the Minister and the biggest business tycoon in the town had to take their children to the available public schools, everyone was interested in what happened there. And for that reason, there was strict and adequate supervision of the teachers and those running the schools, which was why the standard was very high. But today it’s a different story altogether because even government officials no longer take their children to public schools due to the proliferation of private schools and the decline of standard in public schools,” Speaker Abbas said.

The Speaker advised the students to imbibe the culture of hard work, which is an aspect of patriotism, saying that though their generation has access to smart ways of doing things, that has also made them to cultivate the habit of following shortcuts to success.

“You have to imbibe the culture of hard work if you want your patriotism to impact on Nigeria. However, the current generation is a smart one that likes to use the shortcut to success without following due process. So please try to pay attention to details and follow due process. Also believe in yourself and work hard. It worked for me.”

Speaker Abbas also harped on the importance of believing in oneself, recalling how he became self-reliant at a very young age after his secondary school education to becoming a teacher, up to the point where he became a homeowner at 19.

“Because I was trained to be a teacher and after my secondary school I went straight into the classroom. Since then, I never asked for (financial) assistance from my parents, and I became a homeowner at the age of 19. I remember the shock on my father’s face when I told him I was going for my youth service because he never knew I was in the University. Because I believed in myself and doing better for myself, I took the challenge of going further on my own without actually having to bother my parents again.”

Also stressing the importance of unity in diversity, Speaker Abbas urged the students to love their country as they love themselves, saying the concept of loving one’s neighbour as one’s-self eschews any element of ethnicity, tribalism and religious sentiment.

“When you love your neighbor the way you love yourself, relate with others the way you want them to relate with you, then your patriotism is well on its way to fruition. I look at every Nigerian, male or female, as one and the same. I look at your character as a factor for a good and purposeful relationship.

“If you look at my family background you will not see any issues of religious bias and even among my constituents so if you go to every religious sect in my constituency, you will see that I relate with them on equal basis. And same thing with the House. We are brothers, we see each other as brothers and as one. So children if you want your future to be better than what we have now, you must strive to eradicate the disease of ethnicity, religious sentiment and look at the greater picture. I take delight in the way I see you, both northerners and southerners, you are like children from the same parents and I urge you to maintain that,” he said.

The students who were drawn from public secondary schools in the six area councils of the FCT made various presentations, including technological innovations as birthday gifts to the Speaker.

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