The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Geoffrey Onyeama on Tuesday hinted that Nigeria may consider inviting the President of the United States, Donald Trump after the conclusion of the 2019 general elections.
Recall that Trump had during a joint press briefing with President Muhammadu Buhari on Monday at the White House said he would love to visit Nigeria considering the beautiful stories he had heard about the country.
“I would very much like to visit Nigeria. It is an amazing country and in certain ways, I hear from the standpoint of the beauty of a country.
“There is no country more beautiful,” Trump said.
The Minister, however, noted that the visit may not happen any moment soon as it will take up to a year to prepare.
Onyeama said in Washington DC that Trump also has a very busy schedule while Nigeria’s general election was also coming up.
“Regarding the invitation, well if the programmers of the two presidents are very very intensive, it usually takes anything up to a year to prepare for invitation at that kind of level before they actually take place.
“Of course in Nigeria you know we have elections coming up and a very very busy schedule as that of President Trump. Maybe sometime next year we could envisage something like that,” he said.
Onyeama explained that Buhari’s outing at the U.S. was a win-win for Nigeria and the U.S. saying each president has 10 members of his delegation during the bilateral meeting between Messrs Buhari and Trump.
He added that Buhari met with six Chief Executive Officers of U.S. agriculture companies and with a group of 10 U.S. business leaders from different sectors, including petroleum.
“Areas covered were security, trade, governance issues. On trade, the objective was to increase the level of trade between Nigeria and the United States.
“The two presidents agreed that concerted efforts will be made. The issues of market access in the context were discussed.
“On security, the U.S. has been helping Nigeria, supplying military equipment in the fight against terrorism and there is agreement to continue the cooperation between the two countries in this context.
“In the area of governance, the return to Nigeria in the area of large sums of money that has been siphoned out of Nigeria and lodged in banks in various jurisdictions around the world and the cooperative with the United States helping to repatriate these funds to Nigeria were also discussed. A commitment was made to me his cooperation in this regard.
“So there were good wins, on the security side, continued cooperation and of course reparations of these funds and increase in trade,” he said.
