The Federal Government of Nigeria has approved the request of Rwanda to receive its Technical Aid Corps .
According to Director General of the Directorate of the Technical Aid Corp, Dr Pius Osunyikanmi more than 40 Nigerians in the health sector are working in Rwanda under the scheme.
Dr. Osunyikanmi made the disclosure on Wednesday, when he received the Ambassador of Rwanda to Nigeria, Mr Joseph Habineza, in his office in Abuja, said the decision to send more volunteers was based on a request made by the Rwanda to his office that it required Nigerian professionals in the education sector.
He said, "We have well over 40 volunteers in the health sector in Rwanda and let me place on record
that they have been worthy ambassadors of Nigeria in Kigali especially in terms of their disposition, spirit of hard work and enterprise.
"It is this spirit of hard work that has endeared Kigali to Nigeriato the extent that this cooperation is being asked to be deepened today.
"Learning from the experiences of those in the health sector and also leveraging on the fact that Nigeria is an English-speaking country and the fact that Nigeria has abundance of teachers, who are competent in English language, not only in our secondary schools but in our higher institutions of learning, Rwanda is hoping to use our African brotherliness to also leverage on this abundance human resource base.
"Rwanda has made the request to us, with a view to getting a numberof teachers especially in English language to assist in the education development in Rwanda.’’
Osunyikanmi also described visit of the envoy as a boost in extending the frontier of discussions between both countries.
He assured that in line with the transformation agenda of the federal government, Nigeria was willing to boost cooperation with brother African countries, the Carribean and the Pacific.
In his remark, Habineza congratulated Osunyikanmi on his worthy appointment as Director Gemneral of TAC and thanked him for obliging the requests of his country for more volunteers.
He said the areas of priorities of his country are education, ICT and health related.
“In Rwanda we used to speak French only, but from 1994 we included English as our third official language,” he said.
``In 2006 we changed from teaching in French to teaching in English, now English is the official teaching language.
``With the development, we have the challenge to change from one language to another, so we need Nigerians who really speak and teach English to come and teach our teachers,’’ he said.
The ambassador also commended Nigeria for implementation of the Bilateral Air Service Agreement (BASA) signed when President Goodluck Jonathan visited Rwanda.
He said ``We signed an MOU on BASA and on Monday I got a letter from the Minister of Aviation requesting for visa for some technicians to go to Rwanda to discuss about BASA.
``Already Rwandan airlines runs a flight to Lagos, it is just to formalise and to make it official and benefit more.``First of all we need fleet freedom and fleet freedom means we can come from Lagos to go to any other country, carrying passengers and bringing them in,’’ he said.
Only on Tuesday, the Government of South Sudan requested the technical assistance of Nigerian Doctors and Teachers in building its country’s institutions. Mr David Choat, the Deputy Head of Mission, Embassy of South Sudan in Nigeria had made the request when he paid an official visit to Osunyikanmi.
TAC is an Agency under the Federal Ministry of Foreign Affairs established in 1987 to operate a viable volunteer programme across the ACP countries to complement direct financial aid from Nigeria to ACP countries through skills exchange to strengthen international understanding and cooperation.
Source: WorldStage News
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