The meeting Forum on
China/Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) in Johannesburg would be a continuation of
Buhari’s interaction with Jinping which began in New York during the last
General Assembly of the United Nations, UN.
President Muhammadu Buhari
will leave Abuja for South Africa today to participate in the Forum on
China/Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) in Johannesburg where he will ask China’s
President Xi Jinping to fund rail and power projects urgently needed to
diversify an economy hit hard by a plunge in oil prices.
The president is expected
back to Nigeria on December 5 2015.
The President would be
accompanied by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Geoffrey Onyema; Minister of
Transportation, Chubuike Amaechi; and the Minister of Industry, Trade and
Investment, Okechukwu Enelamah to the forum which would commence on December 4
and end on December 5.
A statement by the
presidential spokesman, Mr. Femi Adesina, stated that during the meeting in New
York, President Buhari had indicated to Xi Jinping that “he wanted China to
re-commence stalled rail projects under new terms that would see China
providing nearly all the financing required.”
The statement added that
“of particular interest is the coastal railway project stretching for 1402
kilometres linking Lagos in the West with Calabar in the East; a project that
is expected to be financed with 12 billion U.S Dollars Chinese loan and which
will create about 200,000 jobs.”
Another rail project that
will be up for renegotiation is the $8.3bn Lagos-Kano standard gauge
modernization project, of which only a segment, Kaduna-Abuja has reached
completion stage.
Outside from railways,
President Buhari is also expected to discuss ways of kick-starting the 3,050 MW
Mambila Power Station, considered to be a strategic project initiated in 1982
but has not taken off.
Adesina revealed that the
Chinese President expressed the willingness of his country to finance the whole
project through a special loan agreement.
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