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Wife of President Muhammadu Buhari, Mrs. Aisha Buhari, has mobilised donors’ support for Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in the Northeast and other vulnerable Nigerian women.
Mrs. Buhari, who was represented by Dr Hajo Sani, the Senior Special Assistant at the Office of the Wife of the President, made this known to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on the sidelines of the ongoing Commission on Status of Women (CSW) at the UN headquarters in New York.
She said donors and partners were committed to advancing the status of Nigerian women and other vulnerable groups.
“What she (Mrs Buhari) is doing right now is out of passion and she is using her position as the wife of the president to mobilize resources from all well-meaning Nigerians, both at home and abroad.
“Whatever she is able to get, she always commits toward the betterment of the lives of those people in the Northeastern part of the country.
“I can see goodwill because the donors are there; they are out to make sure they work based on their own strategies.
“Each donor has its own focus, each donor has its own strategy and they also look at areas where the problems are and if those issues fall within their own scope, they are ever ready to help.
“UNFPA, for example, is our major stakeholder, being a donor agency that has supported or has been supporting the programmes of the wife of the president – the Future Assured Programme – right from the start.
“We’ve been working closely with UNFPA and other donor agencies.
“Recently, an MoU was signed between her Excellency’s programme, the Future Assured and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for a two-year programme aimed at supporting the maternal mortality programme in some states as contained in the MoU.”
She said the programme of the president’s wife was based on her passion for IDPs and other vulnerable Nigerians.
“Mrs. Aisha Muhammadu Buhari is so passionate about the issue of women and children particularly the victims of Boko Haram insurgency in the Northeastern part of the country.
“That is why most of her activities under her Future Assured Programme have to do with how she can mobilize resources needed to alleviate the sufferings of the women and children in the IDPs camps in that part of the country.
“She has been doing so much and she has also initiated a number of health programmes across the country, screening women, particularly those in the remote areas for early detection of ailments such as diabetes, high blood pressure, and cancer.
“Most of the women are always over-tasking; they can’t create time to go to the hospital to check their health status.
“Mrs. Buhari has done that across the country and she has facilitated the distribution of drugs in IDPs camps as well as organized medical services there.
“She was recently allocated land by the Borno Government where foundation laying ceremony took place just about two weeks ago.
“She’s planning to build an orphanage as well as skills acquisition centre for the women and orphanage for the children; they are very close to the Dalori camp, which is one of the largest IDPs camps in Borno on the way to Bama.”
NAN reports that the representative of the wife of the president attended the meeting on Donors and Partners, which focused on the plight of IDPs in Northeast and other vulnerable women and children. (NAN)
