By Chinedu Adonu

The Labour Party presidential candidate in the 2023 elections, Mr. Peter Obi, has called on governments at all levels to increase investment in education and health, emphasizing their critical roles in national development.

Obi made this appeal yesterday while speaking at the maiden international conference of Peaceland University, Enugu, themed “Digitalization in Education: Staying Ahead of the Curve.”

According to Obi, such investments are crucial for alleviating poverty and fostering progress. He described education as a key driver of development and stressed that investments in youth education are vital for the nation’s future.

“Education is the most important contributor to development. It should be improved over and over again. The more a country is educated, the more it will develop. And whenever you talk about the youths, they are the engine of growth anywhere in the world.

“If you invest in youths, you are investing in a productive nation, and that is the truth. So, we need to support and invest in them; education is the most critical aspect of this investment.

“We need a government that will understand and invest in critical areas of development, which are health and education. These are the pillars that pull people out of poverty. That is the only way we can develop and help the youth to be productive.

“We need to do more in our education to accommodate more students and create more opportunities in key areas,” he said.

Addressing the conference theme, Obi added: “We need to embrace the future, and that future is technology and AI. We need to embrace it. It is not something that can wait for you or negotiate.

“When we talk about digitalization, it is something critical everywhere. For instance, the university population in Nigeria is below 2.5 million, which is too low for a country of our size. Take Bangladesh, for example, with over 200 million people; they have a single digitalized university with 201 million students.”

In his remarks, the Pro-Chancellor of Peaceland University, Rev. Prof. Felix Ugwuozor, stated that the conference’s theme aimed to expand students’ technological knowledge and make learning easier for them.

He lamented that the government is not doing enough to prioritize education compared to the efforts of private institutions in the country.