The CEO of Centre for Law and Business on Wednesday opined that Nigeria’s President, Muhammadu Buhari’s trip to China is a positive step.
Mr Dapo Oyewunmi was a guest on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily on Wednesday.
The Business expert noted that “China has become a country to recon with. The days of the communist and cold war is over.
“Even the American government has relationship with China. It’s a major country in the world which is expected to be a super power, the economy is extremely large, America is the largest exporter of agric product to China as we speak now, Chinese investment in America is very large and the Chinese currency is being floated even in the western world.”
Mr Oyewunmi, however, said that the Nigerian-Chinese relationship has not just started but started a long time ago during the military era.
“It was being isolated by the western world and the Nigerian government because it was military, was also isolated. So, it was a case of the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
“From there on, trade began to expand, an MoU was signed, the previous Chinese President visited Nigeria twice in 2003 and 2005 to address the National Assembly, they’ve been helping us with Boko Haram, they launched our satellite into space and there is a lot of collaborations between Nigeria and China ,” he explained.
The CEO of Centre for Law and Business maintained that the Chinese government has been a strong support of Nigeria for the United Nations permanent seat on the security council.
“This shows that this relationship has been going on for a long time perhaps people didn’t know that this relationship has been a long standing relationship that has been building over the years and has now reached a stage where the present administration is taking it forward.
“As far back as 2011, there were over 40 direct Chinese development projects in Nigeria; the airport, Abuja housing, Abuja water and 2.5 billion railways have been going on for several years.
“I think this is a good step and with the agreement signed by the Industrial and Commercial Banks of China, we are going to be sourcing very cheap funds; it is one of the cheapest sources of funding in the world today.
“The only thing we are going to be asking is that these funds be judiciously used for the purpose for which they were obtained. We don’t want funds being borrowed and diverted to other projects or put in people’s pockets.We know the present administration is unlikely to do that,” he added.
