Former Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo said there are trust issue in Nigeria to the point that even thieves are finding it difficult to get trustworthy persons to keep their loots with.
Osinbajo asserted this at the 2024 Matriculations of Miva Open University in Abuja, on Satuday.
The ex-VP admonished the students to esteem integrity.
He explained that integrity and trustworthiness are in high demand.
“Let your yes be yes and your no be no. Be known for your consistency in applying high moral values or principles. If you borrow money, repay. Don’t make promises you can’t fulfil; integrity pays. It is getting scarce. It’s getting more difficult to find people of integrity. So, it is in demand. And I can say that because people of integrity are in demand, they are much sought after by everyone.
“Even thieves are looking for men and women of integrity to keep their stolen money with. Life is a marathon. It’s not a hundred metre dash. The person who will last that marathon is a trustworthy person because trust is the currency of business and interpersonal relationships. If you are known to have no integrity, everyone will soon know it. And because many of the best opportunities you will get will be based on recommendations, it is easy to become marketable,” he said.
He also made a case for Open Universities, saying: “Every year, more than 1.7 million applicants write the UTME exams conducted by JAMB, and an average of about 400,000 gain admission to the universities. So there is 1.3 million, mostly young people, who annually are eligible but do not have an opportunity for university education.
“Consider that Nigeria also is growing at about 6 million people every single year. There is absolutely no way that a brick-and-mortar approach to providing infrastructure for university education can ever work. We must also realise, and when I say we, I mean education policymakers, teachers, students, and employers of labour, that education as we knew, it is gone forever.”