The Israeli Ambassador to Nigeria, Michael Freeman, has promised to support the Renewed Hope Initiative (RHI) of the First Lady, Sen. Oluremi Tinubu, through sponsorship of its developmental projects
Freeman disclosed this on Thursday when he led a delegation from the embassy, to the First Lady in the State House, Abuja.
Freeman, who is also the Permanent Representative of Israel to ECOWAS said Israel was excited to partner with RHI because of its focus on women and youth development in Nigeria.
“I have followed and seen your works, obviously you have been working on women empowerment. As an embassy, we are committed to that too, and we have a lot to offer in that area.
“Under Science and Technology, we have a programme where we train young Nigerians for six months in entrepreneurship to help them develop programmes in manufacturing for the global markets.
“50 per cent of the trainees are women. We will be working with our development partners to open 30 innovation centres across the country,” he said.
Freeman added: “We will like to work with your office to empower women in the area of agriculture because Nigeria has the right climates for agriculture
“We are also developing a computer classroom programme for young people that can give people access to technology and modern things.
“In the next programme, we will be opening centres to rehabilitate the young girls who had been involved in trafficking”.
The Ambassador promised that his country would continue to work with Nigeria to foster economic growth between the two countries.
In her response, the First Lady welcomed the idea and accepted to work with the Israeli for the greater benefit of Nigerians, mostly, women and youths.
“I like all the ideas you brought to the table, they are innovative.
“Looking at the population of Nigeria, of over 200 million, that is quite a number and there are a lot of people living below poverty line,.
“These are some of the challenges we are facing, but we strongly believe that they are surmountable.
`The support we have from foreign friends have quite been encouraging because you would have not been here if you did not have faith in this administration,” she said
The first lady prayed for the peace of Israel in the face of the happenings in the country.
In a related development, Mr Hidayet Bayraktar, the Ambassador of Turkey to Nigeria also visited the first lady at the State House and proposed to establish a bilateral agreement with Nigeria for economic development.
He requested that Nigeria should partner with his country on health; security; oil and gas; tourism; digital innovation; infrastructural construction and others.
Responding to the requests, the first lady appreciated Bayraktar for the proposal but, noted that they were beyond her position
“On the requests, these are wonderful ideas. But, you have to see President Bola Tinubu because you are talking of defence, culture and others,” she said.
The first lady recalled that she recently came back from Turkey, adding that the hospitality that Mrs Emine Erdogan gave her was enormous.
She said she looked forward to receiving the Turkish First Lady in Nigeria. (NAN)