Abuja – President Goodluck Jonathan said on Friday that he would launch activities leading to his May 29 inauguration with a brainstorming session with  private sector operators in Lagos on Monday.

speaking at an audience sith Prof. Jeffrey Sachs, the Special Adviser to the UN Secretary-General, Jonathan said input and recommendations from the session would will be put to good use in fine-tuning the government’s action plan for the next four years.

“It will prepare us to hit the ground running after May 29,” he said.

The president said the session was scheduled because he wanted his inauguration to include, not just pomp and pageantry as usual, but also serious preparation for the successful implementation of his agenda for national transformation.

He told Sachs that he was fully committed to pursuing a multi-faceted, integrated strategy for rapid national development that would yield significant benefits in public infrastructure, power supply, education, health-care, job creation, poverty alleviation and other areas.

“We must pursue an integrated approach. There is no way we can isolate any particular sector for attention as they are all inter-related. If we do that, we will fail,” he said.

Jonathan said he would pull all stops to ensure that the country’s ranking on the Human Development Index rose in the next four years.

He thanked Sachs for his continued devotion to developments in Nigeria, noting  that it is a justifiable commitment since any progress in Nigeria will impact positively on the rest of Africa and the world.

“If Nigeria gets out of the woods, that is 20 per cent to 25 per cent of Africa out of the woods. We can carry other African countries along. If our economy improves, it will impact positively on the rest of the world,” he said.

On his part, Sachs congratulated the president on Nigeria’s recent elections which he said the entire world was cheering.

He said that with the successful elections, Nigeria was now at a positive juncture for the consolidation of democracy and rapid economic development.

In a related development, the president also on Friday assured Nigerians that his new cabinet would be a creative mix of technocrats and politicians selected from the best the country had to offer.

Jonathan, who spoke through his Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Mr Ima Niboro, said the cabinet would be constituted “soon after inauguration’’.

“The president plans to hit the ground running after the inauguration. There is going to be very little time so the new cabinet is going to come almost immediately after the inauguration.

“That cabinet will go on retreat for a few days also in Obudu Mountain Resort  where the president is going to charge them with the direction of the government,’’ Niboro said while briefing State House correspondents.(NAN)