AUN built to serve community, not for profit — Atiku

File: Former Vice President and presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress, Atiku Abubakar.

Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has said the American University of Nigeria, Yola, was established to serve the community rather than as a profit-making venture for him or his family.

Atiku stated this on Friday while responding to an X user who questioned what he had done to address the plight of Almajiri children in northern Nigeria.

Defending his record on education, Atiku said his decision to establish the university in Yola demonstrated that commercial gain was not his primary consideration.

“If profit had been my primary motivation, I could easily have located the university in Abuja or Lagos, where the commercial advantages would have been greater.

“I chose Yola because I wanted to invest in my people, create opportunities, and bring world-class education closer to a region that had long needed greater access and development,” he said.

Atiku also rejected the suggestion that AUN was a personal or family asset, stating that he had taken steps to transfer ownership of the institution to the community.

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“I have already signed a deed of gift transferring it to the community. AUN belongs to the community it was established to serve,” he stated.

He said the university had also undertaken initiatives aimed at improving access to education for disadvantaged children, including the Feed and Read programme, which provides vulnerable Almajiri children with daily meals alongside literacy and numeracy lessons.

Atiku added that the university’s Technology-Enhanced Learning for All programme had helped more than 20,000 internally displaced children learn to read through educational radio.

He further recalled that AUN awarded scholarships to young women who escaped from Boko Haram following the 2014 abduction of the Chibok schoolgirls.

The former vice president said he had continued to pursue practical measures to address the problem both while in government and after leaving office.

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