South Sudan’s Vice President James Wani Igga has appealed to South Sudanese citizens not to go back to war, saying that the current conflict is not ‘noble’ and that continuous fighting has set back development, education and other sectors.
Igga was speaking on Tuesday at Juba Grand Hotel during a function about education.
“It is no news to everybody that South Sudan unfortunately is the least literate in the whole world… very bad news… When we came in 2005 our illiteracy rate was 90 percentages and if you ask why, number one factor was the marginalization that we had undergone from Khartoum for all these years,” he said.
Igga continued, “But the other reasons why we became less literate is our own making, we the South Sudanese we entered into endless conflicts, wars.”
The vice president was addressing a function of the Ministry of Education on the 2nd Joint Annual Education sector review under the theme, “Sustainable Quality Education for All.”
“We have lost education as a result of this, to make things worse, there is this last war which we are try to end it now. I don’t call it noble conflict at all although we are reconciling but I never one day call it noble,” he said.
Igga pointed to the peace agreement as “a central opportunity for us to drastically transform in all fronts of our institutions.”
“I would like to ask all the South Sudanese never and never again initiate any war, wars are destructive. See in Africa all the countries that are not in fighting have gone very further in the development.”
“Our situation is going to improve, of course, after this peace, drastically and economically is going to improve even the prices. And this is important for our people,” Igga said.