President Bola Ahmed Tinubu on Wednesday held a private working lunch with French President Emmanuel Macron at the Élysée Palace in Paris.
LEADING REPORTERS gathered that Tinubu is on a 10-day working vacation in Europe, which began last Thursday.
The Nigerian leader is spending the period between France and the United Kingdom before returning to the country.
Presidential spokesperson Bayo Onanuga had earlier explained that the vacation forms part of Tinubu’s 2025 annual leave.
President Bola Tinubu has told French investors that the country is open for business, saying his government is creating an enabling environment for them to thrive.
Tinubu said this on Thursday during a joint briefing with the French President Emmanuel Macron at the Elysee Palace.
“We’ve been working on stabilizing the security system in Nigeria and we are getting closer and closer,” Tinubu said. “We are doing better now in the area of security. I can assure all the investors that Nigeria is open for business.”
“We assure you of a free market economy; easy in, easy out; no hindrance,” Tinubu said.
The Nigerian president underscored his country’s youth who are skilled, educated, and ready to be trained as part of the reasons French investors should look towards the West African nation.
“We have a vibrant youth population that is well educated, skilled, and ready to be trained for the development of our economy,” Tinubu who is on a three-day visit to France told the gathering.
“This, I will emphasize, is why we need the French experts and investors to do more in this area to help develop our youth population.”
He said Nigeria is working on diversifying its economy away from fossil fuels and believes France can play a key role in that move.
“We have the potential to diversify our economy from fossil fuels,” he said.
The internet is buzzing about awkward photos showing French President Emmanuel Macron sharing a touchy-feely moment with his sports minister during the 2024 Paris Olympics opening ceremony with some comparing the affectionate display to a lovers’ embrace.
The photo shows Macron, 46, tightly gripping the arm of Amélie Oudéa-Castéra, 46, a former professional tennis player who is the country’s minister of sports and, as one X user pointed out, his subordinate.
Oudéa-Castéra in turn clutches Macron’s bicep with one hand, the other wrapped affectionately around his neck while planting a kiss on the French leader’s neck.
Exacerbating the photo’s cringe factor is the
positioning of Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, who appears to be conspicuously averting his gaze from the display.
“Gabriel Attal, he pretends to look elsewhere! He doesn’t know where to stand!” one user wrote.
“It’s my lover that I’m kissing like this. Embarrassing,” said another.
“I find this photo indecent, it’s not worthy of a president and a minister,” a disapproving poster seethed.
The curious photo was brought to people’s attention by French magazine Madame Figaro, which called the kiss “strange” and claimed Oudéa-Castéra had a penchant for drawing attention to herself.
Oudéa-Castéra — or AOC, as she’s known in France, believe it or not — has been front and center as the first Olympics in France in 100 years has come to life.
Earlier this month, she took a dip in the Seine River to allay fears of unsafe E.coli levels in the famous waterway, where several events are scheduled to take place during the games.
A pre-race triathlon event in it was canceled Sunday over water quality concerns.
Macron named Oudéa-Castéra France’s education minister in January, but removed her from the role after less than a month following revelations that she had her children educated at posh private schools and made disparaging remarks about public schools where she lived.
Not every commenter on X was scandalized by the celebratory hug.
One user defended it as “a slightly warm congratulation to celebrate the moment.”
