Nigeria and China have committed to strengthening their strategic partnership by advancing legislative cooperation and trade reforms aimed at improving the ease of doing business, deepening infrastructure collaboration and correcting structural trade imbalances that continue to undermine Nigeria’s industrial aspirations.
These commitments were made during the Nigeria-China Sustainable Business, Bilateral Trade and Investment Summit in Lagos, a high-level forum convened to align legislative priorities with international economic cooperation.
The event brought together ministers, diplomats and private sector stakeholders to discuss sustainable bilateral trade, mutual investments and transformative legislative frameworks.
Delivering the summit declaration, Speaker of the House of Representatives, Tajudeen Abbas, described the summit as a convergence of policy vision, private sector innovation and international diplomacy to support Nigeria’s legislative agenda for improving the business climate.
Praising the maturity of Nigeria-China relations, he noted that Chinese companies have played a vital role in Nigeria’s infrastructural development, including the construction of key projects such as roads, railways and airports, which aligns with the House’s legislative goals of economic diversification and national development.
He also pledged that they would give serious legislative attention to resolutions from the summit, stressing the need for Nigeria to take a leading role in global parliamentary diplomacy.
He also reiterated Nigeria’s commitment to the One China principle and called for the adoption of legislative insights from China’s governance model, especially in areas of scientific innovation, green development and inclusive growth.
Minister of Foreign Affairs, Yusuf Maitama Tuggar, outlined both the strengths and challenges of the Nigeria-China partnership, particularly the need to recalibrate economic relations to better serve Nigeria’s industrial development.
While acknowledging China as Nigeria’s largest trading partner and key provider of infrastructure financing, he warned that the widening trade deficit, estimated at over $5 billion in 2023, poses serious risks to Nigeria’s efforts at industrialisation and value addition.
He noted that Nigeria mainly exports crude oil and raw agricultural products to China while importing high-value finished goods such as machinery and electronics. He urged that this structural imbalance must be addressed through new legislative and policy mechanisms that promote technology transfer, build local capacity and enforce strategic market access requirements for Nigerian goods.
In addition, he highlighted the growing Chinese footprint across West Africa, including infrastructure and industrial investments in neighbouring countries, which he said could erode Nigeria’s economic leadership in the sub-region. He cited projects such as a Chinese-funded sugar factory in the Benin Republic near Nigeria’s border as potentially undermining Nigeria’s backward integration programme in the sugar industry.
Proposing several policy directions, including the re-enactment of a Strategic Economic Partnership Act that would require local content integration in all foreign-financed projects, introduce market access conditions for Nigerian exports, regulate land and strategic asset concessions, and promote co-managed special economic zones for sectors such as ICT, textiles, pharmaceuticals and steel; he assured participants of his Ministry’s commitment to implementing summit resolutions in coordination with the National Assembly and other relevant agencies.
He also stressed the need for a shift from transactional diplomacy to transformative engagement, one that prioritises joint industrial ventures, inclusive growth and environmental protections.
Chairman of the Guangdong Trade Zone and China-Africa Investment Limited, Dr Hafsat Oduwole-Balewa, underscored the urgent need for legislation that bridges policy and performance. She declared that Nigeria’s future must be industrial and advocated for laws that eliminate structural obstacles and enable private sector-led growth.
Using the GFTZ as a model, she shared how undeveloped land was transformed into a thriving industrial ecosystem, now home to over 143 operational manufacturing companies producing ceramics, steel, agro-processed goods, fire-resistant materials, televisions, car batteries and security vehicles.
However, she warned that real obstacles remain, including fragmented regulatory frameworks, infrastructure gaps, approval delays and the absence of a transparent dispute resolution mechanism for foreign investors, which are holding Nigeria back from reaching its full industrial potential.
To address these challenges, she proposed three legislative actions: the enactment of a comprehensive Special Economic Zones law to unify regulations on customs, tax, land, immigration, and compliance; the introduction of performance-based incentives to encourage private investment in industrial infrastructure; and the establishment of a bilateral dispute resolution mechanism with China to ensure investor confidence and national credibility.
