Following the mixed reactions that has trailed President Muhammadu Buhari’s foreign trips, the Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Mr Babatunde Raji Fashola in an effort to sensitize Nigerians on the benefits of the President’s foreign trips has laid bare his opinion on how the president’s foreign trips will benefit the Nation in his report titled, “PMB’s Foreign Trips,My Takeaway”. Read the full statement below.
“My Takeaway In making this public intervention, I seek to highlight the benefit of global relationships and cooperation in a world that is changing daily as a result of globalization and transborder economics, social and even criminal activities where no one is safe, except all are safe, and to leave the dispassionate observer his opinion after deep reflection on the value, or lack of it, of the President’s foreign trips.
This way I hope every Nigerian who cares about our country will have some information about what their President is doing about the things that concern them. First I will start with context.
Barely 2 decades ago (between 1994 and 1998) we would not have quarreled with the description that we were a pariah nation. We were ostracized from global events because of bad governance. We had lost the respect accorded Nations like ours were they well-led and well-run. I recall that not a few Nigerians complained that the green passport was becoming, if it had not already become, a burden. That was at the height of the dictatorial government that broke the rules of international relations. It was from there that we started to heal. Investors entered our country. Many brands that we sought after abroad started coming to set up shop in our country. The tourist footfalls in our country increased slowly but surely, but again we began to slide. Buhari and Venezulian President That was when Buhari declared at a meeting in Lagos during his campaign in 2015, that if elected, he would make us proud about our country again. Proud to be Nigerian again.
That is the context in which I view his foreign trips and the manifesto of the All Progressives Congress (APC) on Foreign Relations which promised to:
- Make the Nigerian national interest the overriding factor in its foreign policy and international relations. Work to reform global governance in multilateral institutions and agencies.
- Work to strengthen the African Union to become a more effective organization on global affairs.
- Engage the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) on the basis of equality.
- Play a leadership role to develop a MINT (Mexico, India, Nigeria, and Turkey) as a counterforce to BRICS.