Roundup: China, Nigeria eye more fruitful results in bilateral ties

The year 2015 is yet another boom year for China-Nigeria strategic cooperation, which has created a promising win-win atmosphere for the world's largest developing country and Africa's most populous nation.

With the deep and comprehensive development of China-Nigeria strategic partnership, both countries' cooperation in all fields has achieved great results.

Both countries was affected by the sluggish world economy, the trade volume of the two nations in the first 10 months of the outgoing year was 17.32 percent less than that of 2014, reaching 12.33 billion U.S. dollars.

China is Africa's largest trading partner and the trade volume between them amounted to 220 billion dollars in 2014. Nigeria remains China's third largest partner in Africa. In the first half of 2015, China's investment in Nigeria was 36.62 million dollars.

The volume of newly signed engineering contracts in Nigeria was 4.36 billion dollars, while the volume of completed projects reached 1.58 billion dollars. This made Nigeria China's third largest investment destination in Africa.

The year 2016 marks the 45th anniversary of Nigerian-Chinese diplomatic relations and all indications point to a strong diplomatic and ever-growing economic partnership.

Bilateral trade levels between China and Nigeria have exponentially increased since the two countries established strategic relations 10 years ago.

Much of Nigeria's population has also benefited from heavy infrastructure improvements performed by Chinese companies.

Major infrastructure projects built by Chinese firms that have dramatically enhanced Nigeria's overall infrastructure include the Abuja Light Rail, Abuja-Kaduna railway, and Lagos Rail Mass Transit System.

Majority of Chinese companies in Nigeria are engineering companies and they are undertaking infrastructure and engineering projects.

No doubt that China remains a strategic and dependable partner in President Muhammadu Buhari administration's determination to change the direction and content of governance in Nigeria.

At the Roundtable of Chinese and African Leaders of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), the Nigerian leader said that his administration, since its inauguration in May this year, had embarked on the task of re-focusing governance on the real needs of the vast majority of Nigerians.

He expressed the confidence that China will always stand "shoulder-to-shoulder" with "us" in the quest to fulfill the aspirations of the Nigerian people to propel them to prosperity.

Buhari praised China for the vision behind the establishment of FOCAC as a platform for higher level Africa-China relationship.

"Africa expects Chinese investment flows to the real sector of our economies to promote African enterprises," he added.

Kola Balogun, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Momas System Limited in Lagos told Xinhua that from the just concluded Johannesburg summit, it was obvious China wants to facilitate the long-term growth of other countries instead of just snatching up local raw materials.

Animashahun Davids, a public affairs analyst told Xinhua the establishment of a strategic partnership between both countries in 2005 had contributed immensely to improved relations.

According to him, China, the biggest developing economy in the world and Nigeria, the biggest economy in Africa after the re-basing of the economy in April 2014, is a good and huge combination that will benefit both sides.

"With the effort being made by both governments so far, China and Nigeria's strategic partnership will have a great development in the future," the analyst told Xinhua. Endit