By Gabriel Ewepu

ABUJA- WOMEN under the auspices of Virtuous Women and Youth Empowerment Initiative, VWYEI, has thrown their support for the programme of the Wife of the President, Aisha Buhari, ‘Future Assured’.

This was stated by the National Coordinator, VWYEI, Mrs Esther Akwo, while appraising the programme, Future Assured. She described it as an engine for poverty reduction and better health for women in the country based on the contents of the programme.

Akwo also added that the programme has similar objectives of VWYEI, which she said focuses on adding value to the lives of vulnerable women and youth who are unemployed in the country.

Aisha Buhari

She said: “We are very glad with the initiative of the wife of the President, Aisha Buhari, by coming up with her laudable programme, Future Assured. We in Virtuous Women and Youth Empowerment Initiative, VWYEI, call it an engine for poverty reduction and better health for women in the country.

“As the wife of the President has correctly pointed out, reducing maternal, new born and child deaths has soared over the years in the country. This has made Nigeria second highest country with maternal and infant mortality.

Support of women groups

“We believe as she is in the lead to reduce this ugly experience and with the support of women groups, international donor agencies and the three levels of government in the country the menace will be holistically tackled and reduced before the end of 2019. We throw our support behind her programme and make ourselves available for the fight against maternal, new born and child deaths in the country.”

According to Akwo, VWYEI was established to champion the course of women and youth for better living standards through various empowerment programmes it runs across the country.

“We believe in our country Nigeria, and building the country is not for only the government but for all of us and that spurred us to come up with this initiative to add value to the life of women and youth who constitute a large chunk of the entire population.

“We are out to assist the government at all levels to actualise the goal of economic empowerment and job creation. We already have our framework and structure in over 20 states of the federation, where we reach out to the women and youth, and the success has been tremendous.

Our service has been strictly free of charge and we don’t believe in receiving any reward from those we impact valuable skills for self reliance and economic independence”, she stated.