The Federal Government has appealed to Nigerians in the diaspora to return home and help build the Nigeria of everybody’s dream, assuring them that things are changing in the country.
Minister of Science and Technology, Dr Ogbonnaya Onu, made the appeal at a series of Town Hall meetings with Nigerians in the United State where he told them that old ways of doing things are now giving way to new ways. The minister was in the U.S. to sensitise diaspora Nigerians on the Presidential Executive Order V signed by President Buhari in February, to improve local content in public procurement with science, engineering and technology components.
The Order is expected to promote the application of science, technology and innovation towards achieving Nigeria’s development goals across all sectors of her economy.
The minister said: “Please we want you to return home, it is important. Not everybody will return but some can start coming home, and that’s the essence. We are telling you that things are changing in Nigeria, this is the message, that’s why I’m here.
I heard all the complaints people will do this and nobody responds and all that and so on; yes, these are things that happened in the past and we can’t correct these things just overnight. This is the truth, there is no way you can make these changes and then make the corrections and all that overnight. But the important thing is that there is a change”.
Onu appealed to the Nigerians to make a patriotic decisions about their country, saying “we can’t all be waiting until everything is okay in Nigeria before we can return home”.