Nigeria is learning from China on its economic development success and becoming less dependent on imports, said Geoffrey Onyeama, the country’s minister of Foreign Affairs, Sunday.
While reflecting on the 50 years of bilateral relations between both countries, Onyeama told the official News Agency of Nigeria that Nigeria is on the right track as President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration has prioritized all it takes to boost the economy, especially with agriculture.
“We will like to replicate what China has done,” he added. According to him, one of such preconditions is the ability of a country to be able to feed its population. This, he said, was why President Buhari has prioritized agriculture for food security.
Another precondition identified was that a country needed the financial capital to generate wealth, he noted.
The bilateral relations between the Federal Republic of Nigeria and the People’s Republic of China were formally established on Feb. 10, 1971.
Monday, February 8, 2021
Nigerian FM says Nigeria emulating China to grow economy
Nigeria’s Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala poised to be first woman and first African Director General of the WTO after U.S. too decides to back her
Earlier, South Korea’s Trade Minister Yoo Myung-hee, whose nomination the Donald Trump administration had supported, withdrew from the race, ending the long tussle that had narrowed down to the two women after six other candidates had been eliminated by September. A doctorate in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Okonjo-Iweala’s candidacy was backed in October by the 27 European Union (E.U.) states and African and Caribbean nations, but was opposed by the Trump administration.
Okonjo-Iweala, who was until recently chairperson of the board of Gavi, the U.N.-backed public-private alliance to develop vaccines for low-income countries, had faced a stiff contest from within the African region. Besides an Egyptian nominee whom the African Union had initially backed, Kenya’s
former Trade Minister who has served as chair of the WTO’s general council, was also in the running. The global body has been engaged in a search for leadership since the premature departure in August of Brazil’s Roberto Azevedo. The U.S. suggestion for an interim head in Alan wolff, one of the four Deputy Directors General, was vetoed by China.
While Okonjo-Iweala is likely to commence her stint under relatively favourable circumstances in view of Washington’s renewed commitment to multilateral institutions, the organisation is confronted by many unprecedented challenges in its history. Arguably the most urgent priority for the incoming DG would be to fill vacancies to the panel of judges to the appellate body that adjudicates disputes among nations. The process has stalled since 2019 on account of systematic U.S. opposition under Donald Trump to approve fresh nominations on the grounds that most of the rulings handed by the WTO had gone against Washington.
Undoing the damage to global trade flows owing to the U.S-China bilateral disputes from the Trump era is another extremely contentious and delicate area. Washington had reacted strongly to the potential erosion of its global dominance — invoking national security provisions to slap punitive tariffs on steel and aluminium imports — to buttress Donald Trump’s nationalist “America first” agenda. Two decades after the country’s entry into the WTO, China’s quest to be accorded the status of a market economy is a subject of litigation as successive U.S. administrations and the E.U. states dispute a provision in Beijing’s treaty of accession to the world body. The upgrade would allow Chinese exports to be compared to its domestic prices rather than with higher third country rates when anti-dumping cases are brought against Beijing.
Western allies have also alleged that Chinese state-subsidies to domestic manufacturers and stringent terms on technology transfer for western firms seeking market access create unfair competition and distort global commerce. Beijing, which has emerged as the world’s second largest economic power, on the other hand, makes no secret of its quest for global economic, military and technological supremacy.
These sensitive issues could reverberate in multilateral negotiations on reforms to the WTO structure and further expansion of the global trade agenda. Okonjo-Iweala would have to exert her diplomatic skills to enable the principal players — the U.S., China, the E.U. and countries from the global south — to harmonise their positions. While uncertainty lingers over the WTO’s trajectory, it is hard to over-estimate its relevance today to counter economic protectionism around the world, as populism and narrow nationalism hold sway. The complexities of shaping a global response to the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change underscore the imperative need for concerted efforts to reshape humanity’s common priorities.
By Garimella Subramaniam
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Friday, February 5, 2021
Nigeria strengthens efforts to ensure school safety
The Nigerian Police has launched the Safer School Initiative campaign to strengthen school safety across the country, a police officer said Thursday.
The campaign is initiated under the nation’s public security framework to build a safe, peaceful and secure society, Ebere Amaraizu, the national coordinator of Police Campaign Against Cultism and Other Vices (POCACOV), told reporters in the southeast Nigerian city of Enugu.
The center has printed information booklets for students nationwide, Amaraizu said, adding that the move will “help them not yield to pressures of manipulation of minds by their peers and any other person.”
Additionally, “POCACOV fan clubs” will be built in all schools nationwide to improve education on school safety, he said.
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Nigerian separatist Nnamdi Kanu's Facebook account removed for hate speech
Mr Kanu's page was removed for repeated violation of its community rules, the social networking site told the BBC.
He had posted a video of a militia group attacking and killing cattle in a herders' settlement.
He also used the live broadcast to accuse herders of destroying farmlands in eastern Nigeria.
The conflict between herders and other groups is currently one of Nigeria's hottest political issues.
Mr Kanu leads the Indigenous People of Biafra (Ipob), which campaigns for independence for Nigeria's south-eastern region, where the ethnic Igbo people form the majority.
The herders are mostly from the northern Fulani community.
Mr Kanu, who also has British nationality, used his Facebook page as a key platform to communicate with his followers around the world.
The account was blocked on Tuesday.
'Suppressing the truth'
The militia carrying out the attack in the video he posted are suspected to be from the Eastern Security Network, which Mr Kanu set up.
A Facebook spokesperson told BBC Igbo: "In line with our rules, we removed Nnamdi Kanu's page for repeatedly posting content that break those Community Standards, including content that violated our rules on coordinating harm and hate speech."
Ipob says it will appeal against the ban, describing the action of Facebook "as not only baffling but too petty".
"We wonder why a global social media giant like Facebook would allow itself to be used by agents of oppression in Nigeria to suppress the truth," head of media Emma Powerful said.
Ipob is proscribed in Nigeria, which labelled it a terrorist organisation in 2017.
Nnamdi Kanu came to fame in 2009 when he started Radio Biafra and broadcast to Nigeria from London, using the platform to call for Biafran independence and urging his followers to take up arms against the Nigerian state.
Who are Ipob?
. Founded by Nnamdi Kanu in 2014
. Proscribed as a terrorist group by Nigeria in 2017
. The group wants states in south-east Nigeria, made up mainly of people from the Igbo ethnic group, to break away and form the independent nation of Biafra
. Mr Kanu was arrested in 2015 in Nigeria and spent more than a year-and-a-half in jail without trial on treason charges
. At least 150 Ipob members were killed by Nigerian security forces between August 2015 and August 2016, according to Amnesty International
. Mr Kanu, a British citizen, jumped bail and fled the country in 2017
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The Biafra secessionist movement in Nigeria
Korean Ends WTO Bid, Clearing Path for Nigeria’s Okonjo-Iweala
Yoo decided after discussions with the U.S. and other major nations, and took various issues into account including the need to revitalize the multilateral organization, according to a statement from Korea’s trade ministry on Friday.
“There was no consensus,” Yoo said. “So we needed enough time for in-depth consultations with important members, including the U.S.”
The withdrawal comes after dozens of former U.S. government officials urged President Joe Biden to endorse Okonjo-Iweala after the Trump administration blocked her selection in 2020, making the U.S. and Korea the only holdouts favoring Yoo. That opposition was enough to halt the selection process because WTO decisions are made on the basis of a consensus of its members.
By quitting the race, Yoo would appear to be clearing Okonjo-Iweala’s path to secure the leadership of the Geneva-based institution. But as the Biden administration forms its trade team, few clues have emerged publicly about whether it will lift U.S. opposition to Okonjo-Iweala’s candidacy. The U.S. mission at WTO headquarters didn’t immediately respond to Bloomberg’s request for comment.
First Woman
The 66-year-old Nigerian economist, who is also a U.S. citizen, emerged as the front-runner for the WTO director-general post last year. If the U.S., Korea and the WTO’s other 162 members join a consensus to appoint Okonjo-Iweala, the WTO can announce a meeting to confirm her appointment within a matter of days.
If confirmed, Okonjo-Iweala would be the first woman and the first African to lead the organization in its 25-year history.
The WTO has been leaderless since September, when the organization’s former Director-General Roberto Azevedo stepped down a year before his term was set to expire. Since then the WTO has been overseen by four unelected deputy directors general.
The appointment of a new WTO director-general will help the organization confront an array of internal crises that have ground its work to a near halt.
The trade forum is largely dysfunctional and all three pillars of its work are under threat. The WTO has struggled to produce meaningful multilateral trade agreements, its trade monitoring function consistently underperforms and former President Donald Trump neutralized its appellate body in 2019, which effectively sidelined the organization’s role as the global arbiter of international commerce.
Though the power of the WTO leader is limited by the directives of its members, the director-general can convene meetings, and offer suggestions and strategies for addressing conflicts in the global trading system.
Okonjo-Iweala has pledged to take a more active role as director-general and to act as a sounding board to try to find common ground among the trade body’s disparate membership.
By Sam Kim and Bryce Baschuk
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