The Federal Government has said that President Muhammadu Buhari’s 51 foreign trips have benefited Nigeria enormously in terms of bilateral relations and foreign personnel engagements.
The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Geoffrey Onyeama, at the 20th edition of President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration scorecard series organised by the Federal Ministry of Information and Culture, on Thursday, in Abuja.
Onyeama said: “51 foreign trips? I would say it’s not even enough because you cannot imagine what is achieved with these personnel engagements between the President and his counterparts. if I had my way, I would have him even visit more countries and he declines”.
“If you know the affection and the respect in which he is held by other leaders, it’s breathtaking.
“You know, when you are present, and you see that, and very often they insist on him. Coming in, even when he says no, that he’s not gonna be able to come, they will insist we will change the date, we will do this and we’ll do that, you know, and, and there’s a lot that has been achieved, you know, we had, we had a huge reduction in capacity oil production”.
“From two point something billion barrels, even the quantity that we’re producing of barrels a day went to, at one time below our OPEC quota, you know, 1.6 or below 1 million barrels a day and all the other challenges, humanitarian challenges in the news. The terrorism, you know, the south, south, south, east, all over the country.
“I think in the World Bank indices, countries and the economic trajectory, Nigeria is one of the top countries in terms of economic improvements and indices for approval”.
“It’s not by chance. It’s because of a lot of hard work that Mr. President has been able to do in his engagement with countries and to maintain the confidence of a lot of countries still in Nigeria, and things have not always done his way, Nigeria’s way.
“I think that a lot of his personal engagements and visits to these countries has actually created that environment that we’ve been able to still maintain the level of confidence that a lot of countries have”.
Citing example of one of the trips benefits, the Minister said the President travelled to Japan and met with the head of Toyota because Toyota was going to invest an assembly plant in Ghana. Nigeria is a country of 200 million people.
“You want to invest in Ghana, 20 million people, what logic to him to be selling it to Nigeria, from Ghana. The Japanese government has taken that on board”.
“They’ve been coming back to try to look for what we can work and how we can work it out. its important when the President speaks to those people, you know, it’s Nigeria speaking and as I said, I would have him visit more countries,” he added.
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