The presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Peter Obi, has awarded a scholarship to Auwalu Salisu, a Kano-born tricycle rider for returning the sum of N15 million to the owner.
Obi announced the scholarship at the ongoing Leadership Awards and Conference in Abuja on Tuesday.
Recall that the 22-year-old tricycle rider returned N15m that was forgotten by a passenger who came from Chad to buy goods in Kano.
Salisu, a resident of Yankaba in Nasarawa Local Government Area of the state, returned the money after hearing an announcement about the missing money on a radio station in Kano.
Obi, who was flanked by the proprietor of the university and his running mate, Ahmed Datti, said Salisu’s feeding, schooling, accomodation and others would be handled by Baze University until he graduated.
Salisu became the talk of the town after he found N15m, including some CFA currency, and returned it to the owner, who is from the Republic of Chad.
After receiving the award as politician of the year, Obi said there was an urgency to invest in Northern Nigeria.
He said, “The North has no reason to be poor in Nigeria. We make more money from agriculture than oil. Imagine that Ukraine is giving Nigeria grain in a country that is at war.
“We have land and everything more than them. But they are giving us grain because 60 percent of their land is cultivated and 60 per cent of our own is uncultivated.
“The two biggest states in the North East, Borno and Taraba, have 70,000 and 55,000 square kilometers, which is four times the size of Belgium, but Belgium is exporting what we don’t even export a quarter of.”
He said the only solution to Nigeria’s economic crisis was to create jobs and business environment for the youths, adding that the more young people were out of poverty, the lesser the crime