President Muhammadu Buhari’s recent visit to the United States brought an estimated N2.7 trillion ($13.6 billion) worth of direct investment to Nigeria, according to the Presidency.
In a statement, yesterday, Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Mallam Garba Shehu, said besides the economic benefits, plans were already in motion to lift hindrances to the flow of military support for Nigeria’s war against insurgents in the North-East.
“Apart from the Nigerian pilot’s mischievous mathematics, it is shortsighted and misleading of the newspaper to have claimed that President Buhari’s trip to the US achieved nothing.
“Nigerian-US relations had suffered severely over the past few years. That relationship has now been reset. The benefits of this symbiotic relationship will become more and more evident as the Buhari administration continues to tackle the challenges of corruption, security and the economy.”
According to him, “some of the more immediate benefits of the President’s trip to the US include: the proposed $2.1 billion fund from the World Bank for the re-development of the northeast battered by Boko Haram; $5 billion from US investors in Nigeria’s agriculture sector; $1.5 billion investment in the Nigerian’s health sector; and another $5 billion investment from the US in our country’s power sector.
“Also, as things stand, the embargo on weapons sales to Nigeria is in the process of being removed. The trip to the US by President Buhari was definitely very successful and beneficial to Nigeria. Only those rabidly determined to find faults unnecessarily will cook up falsehood in a futile effort to rake up murk where none exists.
“It is very sad that in this age of free-flowing information and in this era of change, a media organisation would make itself available as a vehicle to peddle a lie of such low and ignominious quality.
“Contrary to the newspaper’s assertions, the total cost of the trip to the Nigerian taxpayer was at the most minimal, in line with the policy of this administration to cut waste and extravagance,” the statement by shehu noted.
The presidency’s explanations followed news reports in some sections of the media that the visit was wasteful, cost N2.2 billion and was not in anyway beneficial.
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