Buhari’s 51 trips abroad bring huge benefit to Nigeria – FG

The federal government has said that President Muhammadu Buhari’s 51 trips abroad have greatly benefited Nigeria in terms of bilateral relations and deployment of foreign personnel.

The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Geoffrey Onyeama, at the 20th edition of President Muhammadu Buhari’s scorecard series organized by the Federal Ministry of Information and Culture, in Abuja on Thursday.

Onyama said, “51 trips abroad? I would say it’s not even enough because you can’t imagine what is being accomplished with these staffing arrangements between the president and his counterparts. if it were up to me, I would let him visit more countries and he refuses”.

“When you know how much affection and respect he receives from other leaders, it is breathtaking.

“You know, when you’re there, and you see that, and very often they push him. If he comes in, even if he says no, he can’t come, they’ll insist we change the date, we’ll do this and we’ll do that, you know, and, and a lot has been accomplished, you know, we had, we had a massive reduction in oil production capacity.”

“From two point something billion barrels even the amount we produce in barrels per day went to, once under our OPEC quota, you know, 1.6 or less than 1 million barrels per day and all the other challenges, humanitarian challenges in the news. The terrorism, you know, south, south, south, east, across the country.

“I think in World Bank indices, countries and economic trajectory, Nigeria is one of the top countries in terms of economic improvements and approval indices”.

‘It’s no coincidence. It is because of the hard work that Mr. President has been able to do in his involvement with countries and has managed to maintain the trust of many countries that are still in Nigeria and things have not always gone his way, Nigeria’s way .

“I think many of his personal engagements and visits to these countries have created the very environment where we have still been able to maintain the level of trust that many countries have.”

Citing an example of one of the travel benefits, the minister said that the president had traveled to Japan and met the head of Toyota because Toyota was going to invest an assembly plant in Ghana. Nigeria is a country with 200 million inhabitants.

“You want to invest in Ghana, 20 million people, which makes sense for him to sell it from Ghana to Nigeria. The Japanese government has taken that to heart.”

“They’ve come back to see what we can do and how we can fix it. it’s important if the president speaks to those people, you know, it’s Nigerian and like I said, I’d like him to visit more countries,” he added.

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