Olusegun Obasanjo, a former president, has reaffirmed his commitment to supporting girls’ education and vowed to punish anyone who opposes women’s emancipation.
He also described how, when his sister was taken out of school and married off, hecame to the decision that the girl kid needed to be educated.
Obasanjo made this statement during the Olusegun Obasanjo Foundation-organized World Diabetes Day in 2022, which was hosted in the Main Auditorium of the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library in Abeokuta, the capital of Ogun State.
According to a statement released on Tuesday by his Special Assistant on Media, Kehinde Akinyemi, Obasanjo stated, “When I started school in the village, I had a junior sister. After two years of starting school, my sister joined school.”
Our father suddenly decided that a girl-education child’s ended in the kitchen, so he pulled her out of school while I continued to go, despite the fact that my sister had also performed well in her first two years of school.
No one may demote his female eldest kid, according to the 85-year-old former military ruler of Nigeria from February 1976 to October 1979 and democratically elected President from 1999 to 2007. He also noted that male children shouldn’t be given precedence over female children.
“And that one decision determined whether she would grow into maturity or not, whereas I would not.
And I also considered sending her to school when I returned from the UK.
And by the time I returned from the UK, my wife had married my sister, putting a stop to her academic career.
“I then made a commitment to always do everything I can to support the education of girls. And it’s irrelevant that this awful notion that education for girls ends in the kitchen.
“The attitude and the culture of favoring a male kid over a female child must be eradicated. Whoever tries to demote Iyabo, my oldest kid, will suffer the consequences. Iyabo would destroy that individual, whether it is he or she, he said.
