Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has officially denounced
his Christian name, Matthew. He said he should no more be called by it because
he is not a tax collector like his biblical namesake. Accordingly, he adopted
only Olusegun Okikiola Aremu as his names, stressing onthat the former
president went on to say anybody who does not want to see his eyes red should
stop calling him Matthew. He stated this in Abuja on Friday, July 14 at an
event organised by the Nigerian Society of Engineers (NSE) in commemoration of
his 80th birthday. Obasanjo clocked 80 years in March.
His words: “When I was born in my part of Nigeria, the
system was that after eight days, you must be given a name and for people to
know that you were born into a Christian family, you will be given one Hebrew
name.
“My mother and father decided to name me Matthew but when I
grew up, I started asking myself the meaning of Matthew. “Not only does it not
have meaning as long as I am concerned, the biblical Matthew is a stupid tax
collector. Anybody who does not want to see my eyes red should stop calling me
Matthew.”
He commended the NSE
presidential system of election and governance, wishing that it could be
introduced into Nigerian politics. Also speaking, the president of NSE,
Engineer Oliver Tagbo Anyaeji noted that Obasanjo successfully initiated and
pioneered the establishment of an engineering and technology university (Bells)
as well as the state-of-art presidential library in Ota, Ogun state, which
considered as first of its kind in Africa. “While it will be pretty difficult
to bring to the fore all the achievements of this world acclaimed achiever, I
wish to mention that President Obasanjo initiated the National Integrated Power
Project (NIPP)in 2005 and directed by policy that Nigerian engineering firms
must get at least 25 percent of exhausted project scope,” he stated. Meanwhile,
the minister of state for industry, trade and investment, Mrs. Aisha Abubakar,
has said about N7 trillion was spent on the importation of consumables and
household items into Nigeria in 2015.
Abubakar made the comment in her address in Kano on Friday,
July 14, at a stakeholders meeting on "Buy Made-in- Nigeria Products"
organised by her ministry in collaboration with the federal ministry of
information and culture.
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