Q 1. Nigeria has completed 49 years of Independence on October 1, 2009. Please share your views on Nigeria completed 49 years and future plans to enhance bi-lateral co-operation with India?
Ans. Nigeria is a huge and united country. Despite the fact we have so many different ethnic, religious and other groups in the country moulding together 250 plus different ethnic groups with various population somewhere in millions or in hundreds with different religious affiliation Muslim, Christian, those who don’t profess any religion and also the people those who have tradition religion. All these are such a big achievement for us and the fact is that we have been able to stay together as a country. We did that at a cost of a civil war, very costly civil war. But we also proud of our ability after this civil war to reintegrate the country both the Nigerian side and the -------(veteran) side came together as brothers and sisters. But apart from that we had political downfall and very serious military interruption. We see it as a part of throws of development and it held us back and slowed down our march towards democracy. The economy suffered as a result because the military are not meant to lead the Government; there way of doing things is completely different. Since 1960, we had various political experiments before we finally settled with Presidential system, which we now running for last 10 years without any problem. We had back to back elections peaceful transfer of power and that is significant for us. As far India bi-lateral relations are concerned, India shared with us right from the beginning. They shared colonial British rule provided a common platform for us. Also we found it very easy and comfortable to relate with Indian. We are also using same English as a language and also operating the same political system inherited from the British that facilitate little collaboration. Before Independence the British Colonial Tradition took few good things from India and used as a model for Nigeria. For eg. India recruit true the system gets the local leaders to be running the affairs they stay at the top. We borrowed this system from India. After Independence we find it easy to have Indians in Nigeria to work as Indian Teacher, Indian Instructor and Indian Doctors. We also collaborated with certain defence academy in Kaduna and we still maintained that closed collaboration with India and this is an overview of Nigeria since Independence.
Q 2. Nigeria is focusing on developing its mineral wealth special focus on gold, iron ore and coal. How would you see India as a collaborator in revamping this venture?
Ans. We in Nigeria is very fortunate, I think God is been kind to us because we have so much of potential and wealth in the ground and above the ground. Yes, solid mineral is in huge amount in Nigeria like gold, cobalt, tin, mine, precious stones, oil and gas. Before we started exploiting oil in commercial quantity, Nigeria was one of top producer of tin. There are so many different kinds of minerals and deposits of gold in different parts of the country provided with sufficient funds. Unfortunately when oil came everybody found it cheaper and started demanding oil and encouraged all to for it and in the process we started neglecting other resources. Right now the focus of the Government is to develop these resources. We have a special ministry for solid mineral resources which is charged with the responsibility of environment friendly utilization and exploitation of these resources in a environment friendly sustainable manner.
Indian companies have a lot of opportunities in Nigeria. One area which is right now working on is for the development of coal and we are lucky with high quality coal which has low sulphur content and it burns pretty well. We are working with Indian companies to develop power plants in Nigeria and that is another area of priority for Nigeria.
Q 3. What is the future of establishment of heavy industries viz tractors and other connected agricultural machinery in your country? How best India can help Nigeria in establishment of such assembly lines?
Ans. One of the things we are trying to look at India and trying to learn from India and what they have gone through. In the past in Nigeria we had a strategy for the development of these heavy industries. It was mainly funded by the government with collaboration of foreign partners. A number of car assembly plants were set up in Nigeria like Volkswagen, British Lehman group. I think about six major car assembly plants were established. We are also having massive complex of iron and steel in Ajaokuta. We also had number of petrochemical plants apart from refineries. We had a large base of Industrial establishments. Later we came realise that probably this may not be the best way for us because after spending so much money by the Government. We thought Government is not a very good manger for the companies and commercial outfit, so most of this becomes run down and inefficient. Now the policy is to commercialised and privatised most of the sectors. There is no restriction as to foreign ownership in these sectors. Earlier we had a policy which restricts foreigners to participate but now it is open to any foreign company can come and investment in Nigeria. They can do it 100 per cent and have al the incentives. Indian companies, I think have utilized their advantage of being in Nigeria to be participated. I am also aware that some of India companies has participated in petrochemical, iron and steel sector in Nigeria and can do a lot more.
India was also working with us to establish machine tool industry. I think they are still working on it. The opportunities are there and are also active in Nigeria in pharmaceuticals, textiles, petrochemical, iron and steel industry.
Q 4. How independent your country is in the field of healthcare? Many ailing patients from abroad are coming to India for major treatments and surgeries? How do you recommend medical tourism between India and Nigeria? How the person sitting in the remote area in Nigeria?
Ans This one of the area where we are struggling to keep up, By our own shaded in Africa, Nigeria is reasonably is a large country which has a population of 140 million and the fact that the most of the people are provided health care in rural areas. The challengers are providing health care in rural areas. WE have been interested in working with Indian authorities to see again how we can learn from the experience and how to manage such a large population like India to ensure medical care given to them. The development of medicine now has comes so fast with the experiment of technology it is a very hi-tech and expensive venture no other country than India provides such excellent facilities and equipments and still give a low cost medical healthcare and India is been able to do that.
We also have patients coming from Nigeria to Apollo Hospital, Primus and Fortis Hospitals in India. It has been growing and the key is that India is providing treatment in such an affordable rates. The Indian High Commission in Abuja is very active on this issue. I believe some of the hospitals have agents in Nigeria who send patients to India for the treatment but that is unofficial side of the story. The Official side is that we are collaborating and trying to establish relation between hospitals in India and Nigeria. We also had no of Hospitals in Nigeria that are linked with the hospitals in India and Abuja.
So we have a lot of opportunities and lot of things to look upon. I hope to see more of collaboration with the hospitals to share and exchange doctors, consultancy service and probably Indian hospitals to work their in Nigeria coming to India to do training programmes.
Right now there are hospitals which are especially in concern to provide Kidney, liver transplant, neuro sciences, heart surgeries and back bone marrow treatments. We are working on it and able to formularize these medical services. However Nigeria and India have identified as among likely who are not meeting their MDG goals in terms of medical healthcare on the other hand we are making progress in the remote areas in Nigeria to create awareness among Nigerians. The challenges we face are the population how to deal with that. But I am happy that we doing it potentially. I think things will blossom as their already their but there is a need to formularize it. I think we are well on making promises and fulfilling them. Even there are quite no. of Indian doctors they are familiar with the terrain who are there in various parts of Nigeria. I always believe that we have a lot of potential in ourselves.
Q 5. A large quantity of waste is generated leading to unsightly environment in the country? How is the waste handled in Nigeria? What importance is given to waste management?
Ans. This is another worrisome area in Nigeria. I think it is just like India. Some of the cities we have this waste management is a very serious problem. This is a very predominant challenge for the developing countries. The ratio between the income groups is more pronounced and they are people who are local income earners who are struggling with waste management particularly plastic waste which is not biodegradable which causes hazards. In major cities like Lagos there are so many schemes but it is not easier to recycle the waste. In the places like Abuja, the capital of Nigeria it is easy to recycle the waste disposal because Abuja is a very planned and new city and the population is just about 3 million. Waste disposal and management remains a challenge in some of the cities which are filthy and have heaps of waste which are not been removed. We are working on quite cities to how to recycle the different categories of waste in different containers. A lot of people have to internalise the concept of different kind of waste, waste paper and plastic and just mix it. This is another area we are working on it to make people understand how to segregate the waste. In some cities in Nigeria we are also embarking on a pilot project to transform this waste for power generation. Also studies are going to know how to utilize. This is the one way of using it in a productive manner to keep the environment clean.
Q 6. What is the future of small scale industries in Nigeria? How do you setting up incubators cum training centre for employment among youths?
Ans. The small scale industries strategies was focussing on huge industries, we left with huge white elephants which are not productive. The best thing to share about small scale industries is to tell the nature of a society we can encourage small scale units an community to perform and work to in small scale industry India is also encouraging the small scale industry.
Training centres basically the system of education in Nigeria is 6334 that is sixth is till primary school ,third is junior secondary school, again third is for senior secondary school and fourth is the university degrees and diplomas. The primary school provide basic reading and writing skills and they are universal for the child to go to the school by that time if you drop out from that level the child should have enough education to get in to the skilled craftsmanship. Those who don’t want to proceed for senior secondary and for degrees and diplomas, a child can get in training in vocational schools. Apart from the universities we have crafts schools where a child can learn craftsmanship and different areas. We have modified are education systems to provide employment to the teeming youth. The major problem we are facing is that the large number of population is under 20 and to them we have to provide jobs when they start producing there own children. The option is to share the expertise with India especially in the remote areas in Nigeria. Fortunately the development has made it possible to disseminate the information in a remote village where we have small computer and fortunately which does not required much power.
Actually we are running seven Point agenda identified issues such as
1 Power- because we have series shortage of power in Nigeria.
2 Infrastructure- in terms of roads, rails, ports and airports we believe that the private sector maintain these things better.
3 Human Capacity Index -Vocational Education to be given to the unemployed youth of Nigeria.
4 Agriculture- Nigeria has an abundant land, if we scratch the land and grow anything on it will grow.
5 Issue of Niger Delta
6 Issue of Health, (maternal care for rural women)
We are working with the friendliest country specially India to work with open heart.
Q 7. What is the impact of world wide recession on Nigeria? How do you refocus on foreign policy to improve the economy and strengthen its industrial base?
Ans When we talk about this world wide recession, the first thing comes to the mind is that it is the undesirable affect of globalisation because the countries are so inter-twined that if somebody sneezes somewhere then somebody catches the cold somewhere. We are pretty lucky that our exposure was not that much. We do have some negative consequence but we did not have very serious problems or any set back in our economy. The major reduction we may see is in the rate of growth from 7.3 per cent to 6.5 percent but we expected the reduction of six per cent. We also had some problem in the stock market since then there have been policies to sanitize the stock and the banking sectors. Otherwise we did not have much of the negative problem.
The key area of focus is to identify the country to collaborate with us and the countries with whom we are collaborating, we always try to learn new things. We are focusing on Eastern Asia country but our tradition partners are in the west and US. We are still struggling with manufacturing and trading activity the impact of this to make us more eastwards to go long with fellow developing countries.
Q 8. What are the plans of Government to increase tourism and extend and direct travel option?
Ans Tourism Industry in Nigeria is not that developed but we had a lot of tourist sites. But I think probably one of the causes is oil which make the Nigerians lazy and develop their areas to go to abroad and spend their easy money. Nigerians are great travellers and focus is that Nigeria does have tourist potential. We are working a quite number of countries who have success tourism. Regarding direct airline we directly issue 30-50 visas from India to Nigeria on daily basis. Unfortunately there is no direct flight. Earlier Air India was one of the direct flights but it was also stopped. Nigerian airline bell view was flying earlier but stopped due to some reasons. I hope we will be able to bring in direct flight from India to Nigeria. Recently there is one Indian company (Dena) in Nigeria whose doing domestics routes we are suppose to discuss this issue and hope this part of issue will resolve.
Q 9. In your opinion how do CII conclaves and the summit organized by FICCI help in strengthening India-Africa partnership?
Ans Begin of August, Lagos for West African region. The presence of the Indian companies is expanding really fast. I know there are so many Indian Companies who our workings in pharmaceuticals textiles iron & steel apart from those who involved in supplies of machinery like Bajaj& Mahindra and there power invertors and batteries and a lot of new things happing in Nigeria. Nigeria is the centre for whole of African region business not only for the internal population. Most of the countries come to Nigeria do their business and go back. When you talk about CII conclaves Lagos is made as the base. I think it was quite successful also, and more Indian companies will come to Nigeria for their businesses. Since I came to India I got so many letters of the companies to establish their business in Nigeria. We have made Nigeria as a one stop shop where in we brought everything together like central bank, custom to make easy for the companies to get registered with in 48 hours. Major challenges we are facing in Nigeria are power shortage and the negative impression about the Niger Delta. There are quite number of cases where in the businessman tell not to invest in Nigeria because of the insecurity purposes but later they themselves invest their to have less competition in Nigeria.
Q 10. Lastly, as the High Commissioner of Nigeria to India, what vision you hold for strengthening Africa-India relations?
Ans. This is a comment I wanted to make which I left for the last question. I outlined a brief history of our relationship but what I didn’t mention was that there had been a no. of high level exchanges which shows the political view at the highest level. Nigerian presidents have come for here; Indian presidents have been to Nigeria. Now the latest was in October 2007, two years ago when the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh paid a three days stayed visit to Abuja. One outstanding thing about that particular visit was that apart from those agreements, discussions they were able to had, we signed an agreement for strategic partnership between India and Nigeria. Now, the focus of my mission is to work for the implementation of that strategic partnership. And I have to say since I came I see a lot of goodwill and a lot of support from the government and I assure you it’s the same thing from Nigeria. Since that visit we have had so many high level delegations and ministerial visits. Foreign minister was to be here in Abuja next week. So the basis for moving forward for actualising the mission that job is already laid out for me on this solid foundation of long relationship and very close ties. Fortunately it has now covered three pillars of diplomacy i.e. politically, economically and socially I failed to mention who come here I employed Indians in their companies in the cement companies. We already have this basis with Indians and in a meeting with the ambassadors I said that I want to know any person who has no India Teachers or doctors and everyone said yes and start laughing. I think I made my point what kind of relations we have built with India. I also think that our trade industry has crossed 10 billion dollars despite of the global recession.
Also the new area is the Nollywood and it is budding industry after following Hollywood and Bollywood. We are closely following Nollywood and desire to see it as a bigger industry.
