A former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has urged patience and courage from young people as virtues that pay off in life.
Atiku who is the founder of American University of Nigeria, (AUN), told the Class of 2025 who formally exited the institution on Saturday that he had personally found out how well patience pays.
He said: “I’ve faced tribulations, Patience is not weakness, It is a weapon of the wise. “When we resisted military dictatorship, they offered me a governorship without an election — I rejected it.
In 1999, I earned it the right way and became vice president. “My father was jailed for refusing to allow me to attend school. We had no infrastructure. We sat on bare ground and wrote with our fingers.
That is where I started”. He described education as the ultimate game changer, adding that the AUN, which he established in 2003, is designed to mould young people with minds to change their world in prag matic ways.
He described AUN as Africa’s first developmentfocused university and a “world-class citadel of learning,” representing a legacy that would outlive its founders and serve future generations.

