Politics
Buhari hails China for providing infrastructural support
President Muhammadu Buhari has praised China for providing assistance for Nigeria in the areas of infrastructure and defence.
He disclosed this on Wednesday after he held a meeting with Mr Wang Yi, the State Councillor and Foreign Minister of the People’s Republic of China on Tuesday.
Buhari noted that there would not be a sustainable development in the country without the infrastructural support that China is building.
“Yesterday I received Mr Wang Yi, State Councillor and Foreign Minister of the People’s Republic of China. Nigeria is grateful to China for its support to us in infrastructure, defence, and others. China is helping us to reduce our severe infrastructural deficit, and we are glad,” Buhari wrote on Twitter.
“Indeed there cannot be sustainable development without infrastructural development. Nigeria will continue to honour all its obligations in the relationship with the People’s Republic of China.”
In 2018, President Buhari and President Xi Jinping reached a consensus to deepen China-Nigeria cooperation across-the-board. Some projects of China-Nigeria cooperation includes the Abuja-Kaduna Railway, Lagos-Ibadan Railway, expanding or rebuilding airport terminals of Lagos, Abuja, Port Harcourt and Kano and helping Nigeria build its biggest hydro-power plant, located in Zungeru, Niger State.
However, there are concerns that the partnership is a diplomatic is a debt-trap as a total of $3.26 million is owed to the Export Import (Exim) Bank of China according to the latest figures released by the Debt Management Office (DMO) in September 2020.
