 Your Excellency, thank you very much for the kind invitation to be here to celebrate six years of future assured how time flies I remember the launch of future assured and of course the many programs Including get involved Where we had to get involved and all of us had to carry our placards and take Photographs on our chests even mr. President was forced to take his own photographs Where they blackout But more importantly the happy faces of women and children Flood victims in Kogi in KB in Niger states who receive food and other relief materials from the get involved initiative The educational initiatives, especially the youth Education Empowerment Program YIP Where a number of young people were given and plans also in place to give them Tutorials in white neck or nap-tep and jump and of course the support for girl child education Support to IDPs that return to their communities with relief materials Including foodstuff clothing beddings building materials building of schools and off-nages in Maiduguri, especially Distribution of future assured packs here in Abuja in Abuja hospitals free health screening in Kogi especially in conjunction with the Kogi women and youth advancement foundation I can see that Governor Yahya Bill is clapping more than everybody else today In In Nassarowa for men and women free health screening for men and women in Nassarowa state You know your state in open state in Lagos It was the commissioning of mobile clinics for medical outreaches and then women Empowerment and training also and the distribution of maternity kits also in Lagos Collaboration with the celebrities and I remember that particular occasion when Abuja was flooded with Celebrities who worked with industry captains to support malnourished children and of course With the wives of diplomats and the clean water initiative also aim to provide clean water for communities with no access to water and Also to achieve the SDG goals set by the UN Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. It has certainly been an exciting six years Your Excellency, I'm sure that of all the children that the Buhari Aisha Buhari Foundation has given birth to Future assured must be the favorite child and this is as it should be the very future This is as it should be the very future of Nigeria and the very future of our communities Depends on how well we address the many concerns of women and children in our communities especially the three focal areas that future assured has identified health education and empowerment and Economic empowerment and we agree with future assured belief that all social indices can be influenced if the health education and economic status of the population are improved upon and That is the case clearly women constitute half our population and the youth are at least 60% of our population and women especially young girls continue to face problems of every kind and These problems mutate and as the social pressures increase every passing day For example Since the COVID-19 pandemic and the lockdowns It's been shown by empirical studies that The rate of dropouts especially of girls has has increased Child marriages also increased Adolescent childbearing gender-based violence all these indices increased The sharp drop in income for most families here in Nigeria and in most economies of the world Would mean that families would have to make choices that almost always will disfavor the girl child and of course female children have suffered disproportionately from the displacement of caused by the insurgency and conflicts in the northeast and of course in parts of the northwest Unemployment of course, which has also taken a dive especially Since COVID-19 largely affects young people who make up the majority of the workforce So the for the federal government the president has prioritized the solutions to these issues and Since 2015 we've ensured that government social and entrepreneurial programs have an affirmative component for women so of the 2.4 million beneficiaries of our government enterprises and empowerment program 1.2 million were women that is 56.4 percent of beneficiaries were women So a total of 38 billion in loans have been dispersed over the past four years and of the 1.1 million beneficiaries of conditional cash transfers 98 percent are women youth employment program also and power of the 526,000 employed 40.4 percent are female and of of course over 1674,000 cooks in the homegrown feeding school feeding program 97 percent are females We implemented a payroll support program which was designed to mitigate income losses in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and of the 307,173 employees that have benefited 130,880 that's 43 percent are female owned businesses So we've continued to emphasize female owned businesses we've continued to emphasize affirmative actions for females of for instance in our artisan scheme also beneficiaries of the support program after COVID-19 94,318 artisans 40,000 of them 40,386 are females that's 41 percent of beneficiaries And so it is also with our MSME Schemes as well with respect to MSME is over 35 percent of all the MSME grants are females and all of these are deliberate affirmative actions to ensure that females benefit Proportionately and where they are not able to benefit proportionately at least fairly in the distribution of these programs And of course there have been all sorts of other activities directed specifically By the precedent to ensure that these act that women are given a fairer chance and a fairer opportunity Child Rights Act of course we're all familiar with all that has been done with respect to the Child Rights Act and Also the Violence Against Persons Act all of these legislation are designed to address concerns That especially affect the girl child or women We've also committed in word and deed to education to ensure that no child is denied access to free basic education And I'm sure that many of us will recall the President's statement on the on the 12th of June 2019 when he said that it was criminal for any government to refuse to ensure to Refuse to ensure that all children of school age attend attend school Compositely and he said that of course referring to the act referring to the to the laws of the matter He said that he would ensure that those laws are enforced and this has happened at the National Economic Council level Where with meetings with Governance were put forward a dashboard to ensure that the president's directives are complied with With respect to education of all children and especially of course education of girls So we believe that compulsory education especially of girls is game-changing in many respects as has been shown that when Female children are educated it will possibly positively impact the age of marriage even maternal and infant mortality will be affected in 2020 the Federal Executive Council approved a World Bank credit facility in the sum of five hundred million dollars To finance the adolescent girls initiative for learning and empowerment Now this initiative was particularly important because it was meant to improve secondary education opportunities among girls in Certain targeted states and these states which are the participating states include Bono, Echiti, Cardona, Kano, Katsena, KB and Plateau states and the project was aimed at creating safe and accessible learning processes Advancing and enabling environment for girls and strengthening the institutional capacity of the federal government and state governments to support girl child education The project targets girls between the ages of 10 to 19 years with a strong focus on Disadvantaged adolescent girls from poor local government areas with low secondary school Transition rates and girls from some of the poorest households This intervention is projected to benefit 6.2 million girls and boys also on the issue of safety Of children especially in schools in the wake of criminal abductions that we've seen lately The president has constituted a committee to look specifically at safe schools And especially to try and implement the safe schools initiative We have worked at that at the committee level now for the past couple of months and already Steps have been taken with the security agencies to ensure that this is done in all of the schools with the support of our state governments Since 2016 the rule of law advisory team In the presidency has taken a wide range of steps towards achieving a strong justice response in support of women and girls We form strategic partnerships with stakeholders local and international Including the European Union the rule of law and anti-corruption program of the EU the open society initiative for West Africa The Cairns Foundation the Ford Foundation and all of them have made commitments and have proven that are proven Very valuable in supporting our efforts to succeed So to ensure our efforts coordination, we've also set up several responses to cases of Gender-based violence The rule of law team supported the establishment of sexual and gender-based violence response teams across the country So practically in every state of the country the rule of law team has tried to establish at least one Gender-based violence response team in November 2019 in an effort to enhance access to justice We secured a toll-free number and a short code for the FCT in particular for the SGV SGBV response team for the general support of Airtel. They are the telco We've also developed guidelines for gender-based violence response in Nigeria and a national guide for the establishment of sexual Assault referral centers in Nigeria to enhance other coordination Also in the same 2019 the president directed the national human rights commission to set up a special panel to investigate cases of unlawful arrests assault and sexual and gender-based violence in the federal capital territory involving complaints of raids of nightclubs and arrests of women by the police the panel convinced sitting in the FCT and Hearings have continued They were truncated due to the pandemic in 2020 But we're told that the resume sitting in April 2021 and are now to submit their report first We've also had first responders like the police and response teams Now these are central to all the efforts were making to address gender-based violence as a result we are currently supporting the implementation of projects aimed at strengthening the capacity of the Nigeria police force and also the F the federal capital territory response team and they receive Records and reports regularly, especially those concerning violence against women and girls for young people and I think that this is an important part of the work that has been done Especially by the federal government the president has directed that our focus must be on creating opportunities for good paying jobs and He said, you know that one of the concerns that he has is that the jobs that young people have should be jobs That can sustain a family and I think that's an important guide for the sorts of things I will then try to do you know consequently Consequently, we've worked on all available local and international opportunities For creating these sorts of jobs that the president had in mind. For example, the AFDB There's an AFDB led five hundred million dollar I-dice program and this is a program that the AFDB is coordinating To support the technology and creativity sector So for young people in technology and creativity The funds will be available to finance the ideas the ideas of young innovators and provide infrastructure such as shared facilities and skills training, you know, and now this this is quite important because the shared facilities are facilities that enable groups of Innovators to come together to use facilities that individuals may not be able to afford So if it's equipment we buy the equipment the equipment will be a of course equipment that one person may not be able to afford But then all of those who are involved in that particular sector will be able to use it And we've been able to demonstrate that shared facilities work. We've done shared facilities Already we have one in In there we have one in your state. We have one also I believe in our dam our state These are facilities that enable young people who are innovators or who are working in a particular sector to share Facilities that may otherwise be too expensive. Then there's a jubilee fellows program This is a joint initiative with the UNDP This program will provide paid internships for 20,000 young Nigerian graduates For 12 months for the next five years and this and this Now this program this program will ensure that these 20,000 graduates annually will be attached to Private companies or public companies where they can learn and gain some hands-on experience and the payment for The program is made will be made by the UNDP and I must say that's a very handsome pay for The 12-month period and after the 12-month period of course these young people can then Go out and do other things for themselves either entrepreneurship or remain with the companies where they worked This is 20,000 young people every year for the next five years So we expect that in a hundred a hundred thousand young people will be trained Paid during the period of the training for the next five years Then then of course we have our empire program the federal government's empire program And this is part of Africa's biggest ever social investment program where we've deployed 500,000 young Nigerians and they are paid as volunteers in education in health and agriculture And this has worked where we started this in 2016 is continued up until now and in 2019 the president has now approved the increase of the number of N power beneficiaries From 500,000 to 1 million so we expect to have a million young people Then we have the Nigerian youth investment fund is 75 billion youth investment fund This fund was passed unanimously by the federal executive council to support the activities of young people 25 billion Naira annually Invested in youth businesses for the next three years So more than five thousand today more than five thousand young Nigerians have benefited from this loan with the disbursement of over 1.5 billion Naira The CBN's creative sector fund is also another fund This is this is what the CBN is providing and this started also in 2019 it's introduced also to support the creative industry and It's a financial initiative so that the creative industry can access long-term funds for Entrepreneurship in this respect and also information technology those who are involved in information technology So in addition to improving access to low-cost and sustainable financing for job creation the other objectives include the harnessing of the entrepreneurial potentials of young people within those industries and What we've tried to do also with these young people is that we have ensured that they are part of policy formulation So those in the technology sector those in the creative sector They are part of there. They are part of the policy group. They will have a creative and Technology sector policy group where they also contribute to making the policies Which is why before now a lot of the FinTech companies Those doing you know financial types of businesses were running into trouble because they did not have banking licenses But they were part of the formulation of the policy eventually Which enabled the central bank to grant special licenses to them so that they are able to do certain types of financial Services without being banks. So you find today that there are many small companies that are giving loans especially loans using Algorithms that just determine whether a person is credit worthy or is not credit worthy and all that and they can just give these loans Simulously, so all of these efforts are efforts that the federal government is making especially for youth For youth empowerment what you tend to find and what we find each time is our young people say well We hear about all these things, but we don't have access to them. It's very difficult to access these loans Very difficult to access those facilities, which is why you know where at the moment Working in consultation with several youth groups to see how We can ensure that these facilities are made easier to access. So for example if accessing credit in Many cases involves putting forward some kind of collateral or many young people don't have collateral So we're looking at how to de-risk credit and we're working with the central bank the Bank of Industry and The several other funding organizations including the AFDP to see how we can reduce the possibilities of Collateral and in many cases be able to give on collateral Loans to to young people. It's a huge. It's a huge. Yeah, it's a huge effort but it's a huge effort, but I must say that The commitment of the federal government is in node is not in doubt at all and at several several different forum The president has continued to emphasize that the future of this country depends on how well its young people succeed and of course the future of our country depends on how well we're able to take into account the problems of the of the 50% of our population of the female Population of our country so again, I'd like to commend the future assured and her Excellency the first lady For this incredible effort and to say that in the years to come We we hope and pray that future assured will do even greater and greater things I think that just as you are sure the future for women Women also are looking for some assurance that our future will be good. God bless you. Thank you very much