President Bola Tinubu has claimed he was a Brilliant Student while in school.

The president, who is in India for the G-20 Summit, made the remarks during a meeting with Nigerians on Thursday evening.

According to Ajuri Ngelale, Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity, several Nigerian students studying in India attended the meeting.

Tinubu told the students that with hard work, honesty, determination, and a shift in mindset, they can achieve success in their respective fields.

He said;

“Good education brought me here and I am happy to stand before you here as the President of Nigeria. I started small. I was a security guard. I was a tutor in school. I was a brilliant student. I joined Deloitte and was trained by one of the biggest accounting firms in the world, because of my education.

When I joined them, I asked them, do you have branches in Nigeria and they said, ‘we have a lot of clients that will take you, if you want to go home.’ That’s how I got to Exxon Mobil and was a very successful accountant, auditor-general, and treasurer, until I joined politics with a can-do attitude.

You can also do it; do not be despondent in any way. Nigeria is ready to accommodate all. It does not matter which part of Nigeria you are from.

The President called on Nigerians to harness the country’s rich diversity as a powerful tool for advancing prosperity and national development for the benefit of all citizens.

We are here to present a new future to you. A future of a country that is so rich, endowed, and highly populated. Very dynamic, unique in its culture, tradition, and ethnicity. That is what will make our prosperity possible, if only we can make use of our diversity for prosperity, he said.

President Tinubu also told the meeting that he ran for the highest office in the country because, despite the great human and natural resource wealth of the nation, the leadership and public sector management deficit in the country held Nigeria back from manifest destiny.

“We are not poor in knowledge. We are not poor in human resources. We are only poor in management and leadership, and that is why I ran for president, to help all of us mould the soul of our country in the right direction,” the President said.