Wife of the vice president, Nana Shettima, said she will collaborate with Maria Alckmin, her counterpart from Brazil, to support the downtrodden in Nigeria.

Mrs Shettima said this when Mrs Alckmin paid her a courtesy visit at her residence on Wednesday in Abuja.

Mrs Alckmin is in Nigeria in the company with her husband and Vice President of Brazil, Geraldo Alckmin, for the second session of the Nigeria-Brazil Strategic Dialogue Mechanism.

The dialogue is expected to culminate in the signing of over 30 memoranda of understanding across critical sectors, including defence cooperation, agricultural technology transfer, among others.

Mrs Shettima, who said she was impressed by her counterpart’s NGO, which had trained about 100,000 Brazilian women in bread making, mulled replicating it in Nigeria.

“I will see how I can partner with your pet project. I believed that this partnership would go a long way once we have a big bakery. For us, maybe we would target widows. It will help to put food on their table with their children and still serve as a source of empowerment for them to generate income for their families,” she said.

Mrs Shettima said she equally had a pet project when she was the first lady of Borno State for eight years, giving free education to females and orphans.

She commended Mrs Alckmin for her visit to Nigeria, hoping that the bond between Nigeria and Brazil would be sustained.

Earlier, Mrs Alckmin said she was excited to be in Nigeria and to seek collaboration on her pet project.

Mrs Alckmin said her non-governmental organisation started over 24 years back, when her husband was the governor of Sao Paulo state in Brazil.

She said, “We teach women how to make bread, and I was inspired to do this when I came across some women who said that they were hungry and wanted to eat bread. The NGO has become more successful, and we have them in 17 states of our country, Brazil. We have trained no fewer than 100,000 women on how to make bread, and our goal is to reach all the states in Brazil. I would like to partner with you in this area, in reaching the women who are poor.’’

(NAN)