ABUJA: Nigeria’s Ambassador to China Olushola Patrick Onadipe has said that the trade volume between Nigeria and China has risen to $16 billion. Nigeria’s Daily Independent newspaper report on Friday said that Onadipe stated this at the Bilateral seminar on economy, diplomacy and management of Nigeria in 2015 held at the Academy for International Business Officials (AIBO), Beijing, China.
Represented by the Embassy’s Senior Counsellor (Economy), Onadipe commended the bilateral relations between the two countries.
It added that Nigeria’s Minister and Deputy Chairman, National Planning Commission (NPC), Dr. Abubakar Sulaiman, noted that Nigeria has a lot to learn from China’s rich infrastructural history.
Sulaiman also counselled the incoming administration not to jettison the National Integrated Infrastructure Master Plan (NIIMP) put in place by the present administration.
According to the report, the minister, who was represented by his Special Assistant on Media, Abdulrahman Abdulrauf, underscored the need for Nigeria to learn from great nations like China in the area of infrastructural development.
Speaking on the concept of Nigeria infrastructural master plan, he said: “It might also interest this gathering to note that as part of the sustainable efforts aimed at fixing our country’s infrastructure, a workable document otherwise called the National Integrated Infrastructure Master Plan (NIIMP) has been developed.
“The 30-year developmental plan, which is holistic in nature, is expected to gulp N485 trillion or (about $3.05 trillion). The five-year operational plan of this NIIMP has since taken off and is expected to lapse by 2018,” he said.
He called on Chinese investors to “come and be part of this laudable vision as it will further go a long way in strengthening the bilateral/economic ties between the two countries. Our country’s natural resources can only be effectively harnessed when and if the right infrastructure is in place”.
