"I AM GRATEFUL ". FULL TEXT OF PRESIDENT MUHAMMED BUHARI OF NIGERIA TO PRESIDENT KENYATA OF KENYA

I thank President Uhuru Kenyatta and his team, first for inviting me and some of my Cabinet Ministers to come to Kenya.

We have gone over the initiatives taken from 2003 to last year and I assure you that the MoUs signed then and the other agreements have rapidly made progress.

We congratulate Kenya for discovering oil and gas – an area of great economic potential which Nigeria had the benefit of exploiting for over 50 years. We believe with indigenous technology, trained people from Nigeria will be able to help.

In other areas of the economy, we are going to benefit a lot from agriculture in Kenya. That is why the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development is part of my team here.

On the area of security, Nigeria has been very lucky in the sense that our immediate neighbours in the Lake Chad Basin Commission, that is Chad, Niger and Cameroon, are helping Nigeria to fight Boko Haram. We have been making progress and I believe Kenya has been making progress also with its neighbour Somalia.

On the continental side at the African Union level, we will discuss both security and economy this week in Ethiopia and try to build on the progress that has been made. And globally, since terrorism does not respect borders, does not respect cultures, does not respect ethnicity, it has become a global affair. So we have to do our best, in spite of the unfortunate demand it is making on the lean resources, to spend on security rather than social services like education, healthcare, water and infrastructure. A lot of money has to be spent on defence because unless we secure the country, we cannot manage it.

I am grateful to learn from President Kenyatta because he is my senior in his position. I just became the President of my country recently. In terms of dealing with terrorists in the neighbouring Somalia, for the last 25 years you have been dealing with that problem. Boko Haram started in in early 90s but between 2009 and now, about 10,000 people have lost their lives not to mention the millions that have been displaced.

So in our meeting, we have exhaustively discussed security, the economy and even touched on corruption and how it destroys the system and morale of the nation state.

I thank you very much Mr. President for this invitation. I assure you that we will rapidly make progress from now onwards on the MoUs and agreements already entered especially on trade and security.