The president in a speech delivered on Tuesday, January 10, at an APC campaign rally in Damaturu, Yobe State, said that he did not know who his father was and that he had spent nine years at a boarding school getting the knowledge he needed to enroll in the Nigerian Army.
Addressing the crowd in Hausa, he said;
“Make sure you send your children to school and make them understand that whatever you have in this world can be taken away from you except the knowledge you have in your head.”
I was an orphan; I did not know my father. I spent nine years in a boarding school and because of my education; I was enlisted into the Nigerian Army.”
“I want you to strengthen your faith, try your best to uphold the children and family God has entrusted to you. Do not betray that trust,” he added.