Nigeria’s President Goodluck Jonathan joined the rest of the world in celebrating fatherhood on Sunday, in a message that says: “Happy Father’s Day greetings to all proud Nigerian Dads…Thank you for keeping it together and standing.”

President Jonathan delivered his Father’s Day message through his Special Adviser on Media, Dr. Reuben Abati on Instagram, an online mobile photo and video-sharing social networking service.

He also celebrated Nigerian children who he called “beloved offspring, who make it worth the effort.”

His United States Counterpart, President Barak Obama in his Father’s Day address says, having a child doesn’t make you a man, but having the courage to raise one does.

President Obama gave the address in a prerecorded message at the White House on Friday, before his departure to North Dakota and California, urging fathers to get more involved in raising their children and mentoring other children who don’t have fathers, the Huffington Post reports.

He says, he knows how important dads are because his own father was absent and that he tries to be the father and husband his family didn’t have.

A tweet from the White House quoting President Obama says: “What makes you a man isn’t the ability to have a child- it’s the courage to raise one.”

Father’s Day, marked on the third Sunday in June, is a celebration honoring fathers and encouraging paternal bond to foster a better society.

“It was inaugurated in the United States in the early 20th century as part of a memorial service for a group of men who died in a mining accident in Monongah, West Virginiain, but was first proposed by Sonora Dodd of Spokane, Washington, in 1907 to complement Mother’s Day.

“Her father, a Civil War veteran William Jackson Smart, was a single parent who raised his six children there. After hearing a sermon about Jarvis’ Mother’s Day in 1909 at Central Methodist Episcopal Church, she told her pastor that fathers should have a similar holiday honoring them.

“Although she initially suggested June 5, her father’s birthday, the pastors did not have enough time to prepare their sermons, and the celebration was deferred to the third Sunday of June. Several local clergymen accepted the idea, and on 19 June 1910, the first Father’s Day, “sermons honoring fathers were presented throughout the city.”
Many countries have since joined the United States in celebrating fatherhood.