Nigeria: Buhari Go to China and Beyond

12 April 2016
opinion

Nigeria and China share the same birthday of October 1st. Currently, there is the all clear signal for all manner of relations between Africa and Asia's two largest countries to blossom. Unlike America and European countries that invented aid "with strings attached", China is a generous country that doesn't so much compel its trading partners to behave in a certain way. In point of fact, during its Mao years, China had branded itself a Third World country and demonstrated a lot of solidarity with African countries. China was then struggling in a highly hostile world and so was in search of friends. Wherever it went, it left its national footprints; it either built you a friendship stadium, a strategic road or railway or factory. Remember the Tan-Zam railway that China built gratis in in the 1976 in East Africa which connects Tanzania and landlocked Zambia. Not long ago, China also built the magnificent $200 million African Union headquarters in Addis Ababa. By donating such a masterpiece building, China must have exacted gratitude from the entire continent.

In the last few years, be it dams, roads or railways, China has built infrastructure that has broken world records. China's thirst for power and energy knows no bounds. Chairman Mao Tse Tung's country is the home of the notable three gorges dam, the largest hydro-electric dam in the world. Contrary to previous projections, at 18,000 megawatts, the three gorges dam supplies less than 10% of China's electricity needs, neither has the presence of 86,000 dams assuaged the country's desire for power.

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