By Abdullahi M. Gulloma
Abuja
President Muhammadu Buhari has stressed the need to re-establish Nigeria and ensure that its potentials were harnessed and used for the good of the country.
The president also said for the greater part of the last 16 years, oil sold above $100 per barrel, but the nation did not have much to show for it owing to what he described as “indiscipline in managing our economy.
“In the First Republic, more enduring infrastructure was built with meagre resources. But in the past 16 years, we made a lot of money without planning for the rainy day. We showed a lot of indiscipline in managing our economy, and that is why we are where we are today. But this time round, we’ll do our best,” he said.
Receiving the President of the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), Dr Bernard O. Aliyu, yesterday at the State House in Abuja, the president said the country must take proactive steps to depart from its seeming permanent level of potentials.
“Nigeria needs to work on her potentials so that we don’t remain permanently at the level of potentials. If Ethiopia is sustained largely by her airline industry, we have greater potentials here.
“But we must move out, engage with the rest of the world, as we need to re-establish the integrity of this country. We need to rebuild this country again,” he said.
In his remarks, Dr. Aliyu, the Nigerian-born ICAO president, commended the president for the strides on anti-corruption, and urged Nigeria to pay more attention to development of civil aviation.
“Civil aviation is a catalyst for economic development. The level of aviation development in any country mirrors the economic development of that country,” he said.
The ICAO president pledged to support the development of the aviation industry in the country, and urged government to improve on training and capacity development, aviation security, aerodromes and air navigation, runways, control towers, terminal buildings, among others.