L-R World Bank Nigeria Office Senior Water Supply and Sanitation Specialist, Dr Awa Diagne, World Bank Country Director, Dr Mathew Verghis, First Lady of Nigeria, Senator Oluremi Tinubu, World Bank Early Years Program Lead, Dr Ritgak Tilley-Gyado, World Bank Education Specialist, Dr Mistura Rufai and External Relations officer, Mansir Nasir after the courtesy visit of the World bank Team to the First Lady at the State House Abuja on Monday 13th July, 2026
… says investments from pregnancy to age five yield strong annual returns by enhancing cognitive skills.
Investing in early childhood development remains critical, not just to improve growth opportunities for children, but also to shape and sharpen their focus.
First Lady of Nigeria, Senator Oluremi Tinubu stated this during an engagement with a delegation from the World Bank at the State House Abuja.
Senator Oluremi Tinubu said that the Federal Government has been carrying out its statutory duties of ensuring that it embraces anything that can make the nation and her citizen’s progress.
“The population size of Nigeria alone is our advantage, because Nigeria is a great nation.”
”The ministries have also been doing their best, for the benefit of our nation, with environment, sanitation because environmental cleanliness is very key, I worked with the Minister of Environment to an extent and that was why we started the Green Challenge”.
”You talked on multi sectoral approach, that is what we have been doing. I will say that Mr President has gotten himself a wonderful team, they got it.”
“When it comes to tuberculosis we went out for sensitisation, and promoted the campaign, and now, talking about our children, those are the joy of our nation, if we have to do a lot.”
She assured her guests that her office would continue to work with wives of state governors to drive critical interventions for the sake of children.
“We are looking forward to school feeding. I can assure that before we finish our tenure, it would have been properly established because even Mr President is very passionate about this, even when he was the Governor in Lagos State.”
Dr Mathew Verghis the World Bank Country Director in his remarks called for expanded partnerships with Nigerian leaders to support the Early Childhood Development (ECD).
He said that the World Bank, champions the ECD as Nigeria’s most critical long-term investment with framework that focuses on several key areas of joint project implementation in five to six-year.
Dr Mathew Verghis explained that the early childhood development strategy encompasses boosting nutrition and healthy living in Nigeria children.
He highlighted that those investments from pregnancy to age five yield strong annual returns by enhancing cognitive skills, lowering health costs, and breaking multi-dimensional poverty cycles.
”Every five or six years, we reframe our programmes in Nigeria. Nigeria is unsurprisingly one of World bank’s largest partners and our office here is one of the largest in the world”.
”In the frame work, investing in people is an important focus of the world bank, we are partners in education and nutrition programmes we have programmes on skills. We recognise the importance of investing in people.
He said for Nigerian to benefit from the ECD, the first Lady can help to use her platform to Fastrack a multi sectoral approach for the programmes to work in the nation.
In submissions across key portfolios including growth and learning outcomes, education and sanitation, the World Bank applauded the alignment between the First Lady’s interventions, particularly ongoing campaign against child malnutrition, and the bank’s programme.
The Country Director further said that Nigeria is paramount to the world bank as one of the nations that can help them to meet with their targets.
”Nigeria is a very important partner for world Bank and her success is crucial for the world Bank to achieve its target”.
”We have targets for healthcare delivery, broadband access, energy access and for these various things, if Nigeria does not succeed, the World Bank is not succeeding”.
”This definition of ECD is very strong in the global literature, in the Economic Research where it has become clear that investing in the young ones is among the best investments especially on the public sector side, it has high returns”.
”One down side is the returns comes very much later, sometimes it’s not everybody that is willing to take that perspective, it requires leadership to make that happen, the returns don’t come quickly therefore, it requires the leadership.”
With Nigeria as one of its largest partners, the intention of the bank under its country partnership framework is to drive the implementation phase of its program with a whole of the government approach, for which the leadership and commitment of the First Lady is critical.
The five-man delegation led by the Country Director of World Bank office in Nigeria, Matthew Verghis was in the First Lady’s office to brief her on the bank’s early years programme in Nigeria for the next five years, which is currently at its technical and analytical phase.
SIGNED
Busola Kukoyi
SSA Media to the First Lady of the Federal Republic of Nigeria
Monday 13th July, 2026
