President Muhammadu Buhari says security is key in attracting foreign investment to the country and that his administration is committed to ensure that.
The President gave the assurance in an interview on the ARISE TV, monitored by the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), on Thursday in Lagos.
Buhari urged that the general public should ensure that infrastructures being put in place are protected and not destroyed.
“Security is paramount and very important as no one will invest in an unsecured environment.
“Nigeria is resourceful and God has endowed us but no one will bring investments into the country if it isn’t secured enough.
“I told the executive council, which comprised of members from every state of the federation, to go and speak with their governors and the people on how paramount security is to the development of the country,’’ Buhari said.
In scaling up the security architecture, the President said that he has ordered the country’s military and the Police to be ruthless with terrorists in the country and deal with them in the language they understood.
“You can’t kill innocent people and say God is great.”
Buhari said the order to the Military and the Police will yield the expected results in a “few weeks time”.
According to him, if the terrorists keep people away from their farms, the country may soon have food shortage and scarcity.
The President also noted that the Nigeria – Niger Republic railways would help in strengthening bilateral relations between both countries.
“We have so many neighbouring countries and we must also thrive in helping them.
“I had visited Niger, Chad and Cameroon so as to boost our relationship with them.
“If we were not in a good relationship with them, Boko Haram would have done worse.
“Our border between Niger and Nigeria is 1,500 kilometres, so we cannot isolate or cut them off.
“They have discovered oil in Niger Republic; so the railway is important in that regards because we don’t want them to go through Benin Republic while exporting; they should come through Nigeria.
“If we can make this work, it will help the country to compete with Benin Republic in terms of trade,” the President said.
He reiterated his commitment toward improving infrastructure in the country.
“From 1999 to 2014, our production of oil was 241 million barrels per day at a cost of $100 per barrel, but the state of infrastructure in the country is terrible.
“The roads are bad, power supply and railway are also bad.
“So tell me, which country can develop without proper infrastructure and that is why we are committed toward improving that.
“We have built and are still building several railways across the nation to ease transportation burdens.
“We have also improved the power sector,’’ he said.
The president urged Nigerians to be fair while assessing his administration.
“In terms of the legacy I would leave behind, I would allow Nigerians to be the judge and hopefully, they would be fair to me,’’ he said. (NAN)
