Foreign Affairs Minister, Mr. Geoffrey Onyeama, has deflated the story making the rounds that the international community was strongly against President Muhammadu Buhari’s second term bid.
He also said that it was not true that Nigeria went into recession because international investors frightfully withdrew their funds because of President Buhari’s utterances and hard-line posture against corruption.
His statement, however, drew the ire of Yoruba socio-political organisation, Afenifere, Second Republic lawmaker, Junaid Mohammed and Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, who agreed that the poor performance of the present government would not elicit the support of the international community.
Onyeama stated that to the contrary, Nigeria under President Buhari had been enjoying the goodwill of the international community, to the extent of being supportive of his second term bid.
He made the remarks yesterday at Awgu, Enugu State, when Enugu West Peoples Assembly donated vehicles in support of President Buhari’s 2019 presidential election campaign.
Onyeama said: “The international community is very supportive of President Buhari. As you can see President Buhari has transformed our relationship with foreign countries and also the perception of Nigeria by foreign leaders. An evidence of that is the rate and number of high level foreign leaders that are coming to Nigeria.
“Next week, for instance, which is very unusual for any country, we are having the UK Prime Minister and two days later will be the visit of the German Chancellor. ‘’This shows what they feel about President Buhari; that Nigeria is now a country they want to do business with.”
On the allegation that President Buhari’s posture and speeches were scaring away international investors, Onyeama said: “It’s on the contrary. Mr. President has taken the initiative to establish the Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council, PEBEC, chaired by the Vice President and the World Bank ranks countries according to ease of doing business.
“Within one year of Mr. President establishing this council, and taking measures to make doing business easier, Nigeria has jumped about 25 places in the World Bank ranking and has been promoting the most impressive jobs in Nigeria in the last one year.
So the whole world is seeing that Nigeria under President Buhari is more and more a place of doing business.”
The minister, while commending the gesture of Enugu Peoples Assembly for donating towards the President’s re-election bid, indicted the Enugu State Government for non-performance in the past three years. “The state government spends so much money on advertisement but pensioners are not being paid.
We want a serious government because Enugu is matured to have a serious government. It is not winning the election that is the matter but plans for governance.
“It is not about building houses everywhere; I am looking for better governance in Enugu State. The people who elected leaders should be the ones dictating the pace of governance and not the other way round.”
