President Bola Tinubu met with the Director-General of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) Prof. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
Prof. Okonjo-Iweala arrived at the Presidential Villa at about 2:50 pm alongside the former Minister of State for Health under Goodluck Jonathan’s administration, Dr. Ali Pate.
According to Okonjo-Iweala, while addressing the media, She said,
“We saw the president and focused on how do we support Nigerians at this time of need and we all know that things are very difficult for Nigerians outside, everyone is struggling. I’m here myself for a quiet visit, so this was not really an official WTO mission but we are able to engage with Mr. President to talk about – what are the kinds of programmes that could be put in place to make sure that the suffering of Nigerians are being alleviated and we had a really good conversation on trying to look at community and grassroots programs, that can be put in place, to create jobs for young people, on trying to support women and children who are bearing the brunt on some of the suffering in the country.
“We talked about how for the longer time we need to look at investment opportunities that Nigeria can seize including the pharmaceutical industry and we also talked about what type of support the WTO (World Trade Organization) can bring. We already working in Nigeria with women in particular who owns small and medium enterprises to try to help them upgrade the quality of their product whether its in the agriculture area, textile and in other areas, so they can sell more internationally.” She added
“We are trying to help them with digital trade, the wave of the future is digital trade, so how do we train, empower and give Nigerian women and owners of small and medium enterprises support, so they can trade more, create more jobs, that is what is needed now, helping Nigerians to alleviate the difficult conditions that they are in, so that is what we discussed with Mr. President and as the Director-General of the World Trade Organization, we are going to try to do the most we can to support Nigerians in this particular time”. She concluded
Prof. Okonjo-Iweala was the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy during Jonathan’s government
