TheCable

Michael Freeman, Israeli ambassador to Nigeria, says his country will support the renewed hope initiative (RHI) of Oluremi Tinubu, the first lady.

Freeman, who is also the permanent representative of Israel to the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), spoke in Abuja on Thursday when he led a delegation from the embassy to the first lady at the State House.

The ambassador said Israel is excited about the prospects of contributing to 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,” Freeman told the first lady.

“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 percent of the trainees are women.”

Freeman said the Israeli embassy would work with development partners to open 30 innovation centres across the country.

The ambassador also expressed plans to work with the first lady’s office to empower women in agriculture because of Nigeria’s “right climates” for agriculture.

“In the next programme, we will be opening centres to rehabilitate the young girls who had been involved in trafficking,” he added.

Oluremi expressed satisfaction with the ambassador’s plans and emphasised the need for collaboration to achieve shared goals.

“Looking at the population of Nigeria of over 200 million, that is quite a number and there are a lot of people living below the poverty line,” the first lady said.

“These are some of the challenges we are facing, but we strongly believe that they are surmountable.

“The support we have from foreign friends has been quite encouraging because you would have not been here if you did not have faith in this administration.”

Oluremi prayed for peace in the Middle Eastern nation amid escalating tensions with other countries in the region.