The Presidency has said the recent global tours of President Muhammadu Buhari have started manifesting positively both in the economy and national security of the country.
Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr Geoffrey Onyeama, said this, in Abuja, yesterday.
He said such visits had started attracting investors and enhancing Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) into the country.
The minister said the trips were aimed at re-launching Nigeria in the mind of countries that hitherto distrusted it by rebuilding its image and restoring its past glory.
“You have to look at it from the point of view of where the country was when the president took over; we had existential security challenges with Boko Haram occupying some territories.
“We had rampant corruption and the oil price crashing, so his outreach to the rest of the world was to get the international community to buy into the priorities of the government.
“He identified security as one of it, and, on security, you will recall that a number of our traditional allies in the western world stopped cooperating with Nigeria militarily.”
Onyeama said some countries had stopped providing weaponry and pulled out advisers from Nigeria while troops engaged in mutiny before the Buhari administration.
He said that in the area of security the president sought to allay the fears of other countries and get them back on board to support government’s security initiatives against Boko Haram.
“On the governance and anti-corruption side, you will also recall large amounts of money stashed away, and a lot of them in the western world.
“So those visits were used to get those foreign countries to buy into the anti-corruption initiative and drive of the government and to help in the restitution of the stolen funds into the country.”
The minister noted that Nigerian faced real economic challenges with the dramatic crash in oil prices which needed urgent attention.
He said that the president’s drive in that context was the diversification of the economy and the promotion of foreign direct investment.