On the occasion of Nigeria’s 65th Independence anniversary, President Bola Tinubu has encouraged the citizens to work towards making the country a nation of producers, not just consumers.
‘Let us be a nation of producers, not just consumers. Let us farm our land and build factories to process our produce. Let us patronise ‘Made-in-Nigeria’ goods. I say Nigeria first. Let us pay our taxes’, he said in his broadcast this morning.
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The President also spoke about the progress the country has made since Independence. He said: ‘Nigerians today have access to better education and healthcare than in 1960. At Independence, Nigeria had 120 secondary schools with a student population of about 130,000. Available data indicate that, as of year 2024, there were more than 23,000 secondary schools in our country.
At Independence, we had only the University of Ibadan and Yaba College of Technology as the two tertiary institutions in Nigeria. By the end of last year, there were 274 universities, 183 Polytechnics, and 236 Colleges of Education in Nigeria, comprising Federal, State, and private institutions. We have experienced a significant surge in growth across every sector of our national life since Independence – in healthcare, infrastructure, financial services, manufacturing, telecommunications, information technology, aviation and defence, among others’.
