Israel Backs Nigeria's Gender Equality Efforts

Michael Freeman

Israel pledged to help Nigeria empower its women, according to the envoy

The Israeli ambassador to Nigeria, Michael Freeman, has stated that his nation will back Oluremi Tinubu, the first lady, and her renewed hope initiative (RHI).

Freeman led a group from the embassy visited the first lady at the State House on Thursday in Abuja. Freeman is also the permanent representative of Israel to the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).

Israel is thrilled about the opportunity to support youth and women's development in Nigeria, according to the ambassador.

“I have followed and seen your works. Obviously, you have been working on women's 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.”

According to Freeman, 30 innovation centers will be opened across the nation by the Israeli embassy in collaboration with development partners.

The ambassador also mentioned that because Nigeria has the “right climates” for agriculture, they intend to collaborate with the first lady's office to support women in the agricultural sector.

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

Oluremi noted that while she was pleased with the ambassador's proposals, cooperation was still necessary to accomplish common objectives.

“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.”

Amid growing tensions with neighboring countries, Oluremi prayed for peace in the Middle Eastern nation.