Nigeria's FM defends president's foreign trips

Nigeria's Minister of Foreign Affairs Goeffrey Onyeama on Monday said the overseas trips embarked upon by President Mohammed Buhari were carefully selected in line with certain priorities and development objectives of the country.

The minister spoke in Lagos at a town hall meeting organized to brief the public on the activities of the government in the last 11 months.

He said the President was not embarking on the trips just for the fun of it, stressing that some of them were already yielding results for the progress of the country.

"When the President assumed office, the problem at that time was how to get the confidence of neighboring countries to support the war on terror," he said.

"So, what the President did was to travel to Chad, Cameroon and other neighboring countries to seek a joint coalition, and now we can all see the results the country is recording against Boko Haram," he added.

According to him, some of the President's trips to certain Western countries were at the invitation of these nations.

The minister listed the United States, the United Kingdom and France as some of the countries whose leaders invited Buhari based on his goodwill.

He said in the face of falling oil prices, the country needed to diversify the economy and seek partnerships to strengthen it, adding that the president's recent trip to China was successful as it yielded investment commitments from the Chinese government and investors.

According to him, the government was committed to making Nigeria a strong voice in Africa and the rest of the world, and that the foreign policy of the present administration was to make the county a major player in the comity of nations. Endit