The Chairman of Abeokuta North Local Government Area, Dr Lanre Oyegbola-Sodipo, has embarked on a city-to-city engagement with cities in the United States of America for business, cultural, and learning exchanges, starting with the Office of the Mayor of Boston.
Oyegbola-Sodipo met with the Economic and Development Team of the Office of the Mayor of Boston, Michelle Wu, led by Mr Segun Idowu.
The council boss expressed the readiness of Abeokuta for business, cultural, and learning exchanges with Boston.
Oyegbola-Sodipo, who is also scheduled to visit Philadelphia and Chicago, highlighted that Abeokuta is the educational capital of Nigeria, aside from its proximity to Lagos, and noted that Abeokuta North is 70 percent arable land fit for agriculture and can be a net producer of cassava.
Idowu, who is also the Chief Economic Opportunity and Inclusion Officer, remarked that Oyegbola-Sodipo would be the first Nigerian to visit the Office of the Mayor with such a proposition, even as he noted that there had been conversations with representatives of other African cities.
He expressed his interest and joy in seeing that a city in Nigeria would finally be on the consideration map for exchange programmes and opportunities available within the larger sister-city framework, saying that the benefits of city-to-city conversations and memoranda of understanding can bring policymakers, entrepreneurs, and international businesses together to promote economic growth and development.
Idowu hinted at the possibilities of setting up wider consultations and engagements with Abeokuta North LG as part of the outcome of the parley, saying that this would put the local government in contact with willing and proven investors, venture capital, and entrepreneurs. He pointedly declared Boston as “a preferred city with perhaps the largest assembly of these persons and interests because of its uniqueness and strong educational and inventive leanings.”
Present at the meeting were Yuxi Wang, the International Business Strategy Manager for the City of Boston, Office of the Mayor of Boston, Massachusetts, USA, and James Reginald Colimon, Deputy Director of Global Affairs & Protocol, Mayor’s Office of Economic Opportunity & Inclusion, among others.
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