The newly sworn-in Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Bianca Odumegwu-Ojukwu and that of Trade and Investments, Jumoke Oduwole have expressed their commitments to President Bola Tinubu’s Renewed Hope Agenda.
Both Ministers spoke to newsmen after they were sworn-in by the President at the Presidential Villa, Abuja on Monday.
Ojukwu said she would advance the core principles of development, democracy, demography, and diaspora across Africa and the World over.
She said Tinubu’s administration intended to leverage on the creative potential and huge capital skills of the increasing Nigerian youth population both within and across the globe.
“We intend in this administration to leverage on the creative potentials, on the skills on the huge capital that these young people have to bring to the country, and of course the Diaspora.
“I am fully committed to keying into the foreign policy thrust of this government. The President has actually made things much easier by building the foreign policy thrust of his administration.
“The 4Ds comprise of democracy, strengthening democratic institutions all over Africa, principally.”
Stressing that with Nigeria’s Diasporans that remit $22million annually, partnering and integrating their initiatives into the government’s agenda would forge more strategic collaborations that would enhance the service delivery of the Nigerian government.
“We have a Diaspora that remits annually, $22 billion, we have a Diaspora that is doing so well all over the world, and if we can partner with them and ensure that we bring them into the administration’s initiatives and use them also to forge strategic partnerships with financial institutions all over the world, that will in no small way enhance the workings on the service delivery for the Foreign Minister.
“Development; leveraging on the African Continental Free Trade Area to encourage and harness our economic potentials and of course, looking at the demography, we have a huge youth population Nigeria. 70% of the population is under the age of 43, so that’s a huge demographic.
The Minister of State For Foreign Affairs added that she would ensure that consular services abroad are much more effective.
“And of course, ensuring that consular services abroad are much more effective, and our citizens abroad are much happier with what they are receiving, and get that sense that their government truly cares for their welfare. “Mrs Odumegwu-Ojukwu added.
Minister of Trade and Investment, Jumoke Oduwole, stressed the need to boost the AfCFTA for Nigerian businesses and ensure that both domestic and foreign investments are retained.
“The most important thing with the trade agreement is to make sure that we go after optimizing the AfCFTA for Nigerian businesses, which means pragmatically supporting them at this time to export their products we need productive jobs that deliver value for Nigerians,” she emphasized.
She also highlighted the importance of aligning trade agenda with monetary and fiscal policies. “This is significant and imperative; we will prioritize these in the short term,” she concluded.
“It’s really important that we retain domestic investment and aggressively attract new investment. That means tracking all the investments Mr President, as chief investment officer of this economy, has gone after in the last 17 months, and making sure that the businesses, we’ve already started engaging with our peerless business champions, the businesses at the higher level and the medium level and at the micro level, that each of them at those specific cadres, are optimized to make it progressively easier.”
She stressed the significance and imperative of synergizing the trade agenda of Tinubu’s administration to ensure it was in tandem with monetary and fiscal policies.
