11th September, 2012
Nigeria, the butt of international derision for successive poor national elections, until the 2011 polls, has offered to assist Zimbabwe, to conduct free and fair election.
Vice-President Namadi Sambo on Tuesday made the offer when the Zimbabwean Deputy Prime Minister, Mrs Thokozani Kitupe, visited him at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
He said Nigeria was ready to support Zimbabwe through training of its electoral officers by the Independent National Electoral Commission.
According to him, Nigeria will continue to support sister African countries in entrenching democratic values for the general progress of the continent.
Sambo informed the deputy prime minister of the steps being taken to transform Nigeria in the areas of reducing maternal mortality, power supply, transportation, education, agriculture and women’s access to finance.
He congratulated the Global Women Power Network for the initiative to bring women from the executive, legislature, judiciary and civil society organisations together to fight for their rights.
He stated that in pursuit of the 35 per cent affirmative action in Nigeria, the President Goodluck Jonathan-led administration had promoted the rights of women in government and other spheres of human endeavour.
Earlier, Kitupe briefed Sambo on the formation of a network for women, known as the Global Power Network for Women.
She said membership of the organisation was mostly drawn from the executive, legislature and judicial arms of government.
She thanked Nigeria for agreeing to host the first conference of the organisation in 2013, saying that the Nigerian Minister of State Foreign Affairs, Prof. Viola Onwuliri, had been nominated to lead the organisation.
She recalled both the Abuja and Maputo declarations on the rights of women where governments agreed to commit 15 per cent of their budgets to the eradication of HIV and AIDS and boasting agriculture.
Kitupe called on the Federal Government to support Zimbabwe’s 2013 forthcoming national elections.