Ibrahim Gambari, Chief of Staff to President Muhammadu Buhari, says Nigeria’s biggest asset was the country’s leader.

“The biggest asset we have as a nation today is the credit and credibility that President Muhammadu Buhari enjoys in our subregion, in Africa, the middle East, and the world at large.”

Mr Gambari stated this Saturday in Abuja at the book launch of a former Nigerian ambassador, Mohammed Ibrahim, titled “With Heart and Might: 33 Years In the Nigerian Diplomatic Service”.

The chief of staff said Nigeria should “take advantage and try to institutionalize that credit and credibility which he has brought to our nation even beyond his tenure.”

Mr Gambari proposed the building of a “national consensus behind the articulation design, defense of our national interest in the new millennium”, in promoting Nigeria’s foreign policy direction.

He added that “Nigeria must continue to establish both in principle and in practice that it is no longer enough to see what the country can do for others. But what we can do together with others in the pursuit of our common interest.”

According to him, “It is our duty at the diplomacy to persuade others that it is in their own interest to try to support us with what we promote and propose as our national interest.

“If you do not agree with this, just look at what Israel has managed to do with the United States, they made their interest the interest of the United States in the articulation and promotion.

“Because you are adding to your prestige when other countries adopt as their interest what you decide.

“And, that is why you have to recruit the best and the brightest to not only define your interest but let other people define their interest in your own interest,” Gambari,” Mr Gambari said.

(NAN)