The Federal Government (FG) is working with China for the realisation of another railway project. This is according to Cui Jianchun, an envoy of the Asian country.
Disclosing this development, the Ambassador of People’s Republic of China to Nigeria said even though the idea for a new railway project had already been conceptualised, President Muhammadu Buhari-led’s government needs funding to make it a reality.
According to him, sourcing for the fund is a big challenge for the Nigerian government.
“If we have a railway, it would be easy for people to travel and we are working on the pipeline. The challenge however is how we can get the money.
“How can we get reliable and reasonable terms of the finance? This is a challenge for us. But we are working hard and we are talking with the banks to do this for us. The banks are using their professional language.
“They are calculating the risks and how they can get the money back because we are in a difficult situation now. We are looking at how we can lift people out of poverty,” Jianchun said.
Expressing his understanding of what Nigeria needs to boost her economy, the Chinese envoy explained that the most populous African nation needs a comprehensive, sustainable and systematic approach to development, adding that railway, highways, airports are key to the movement of people from place to place both locally and internationally.
“People cannot afford to buy tickets if there is no migration. How can we be productive by ourselves? There are five goals for two countries (China and Nigeria) to work together.
“Political consonance, economic cooperation and international correlation, security and military collaborations and people to people communications. We are currently engaged in infrastructure development.
“The second is Information and Communications Technology (ICT). We need the digital economy, we need the 5G technology and also we need a value-added industry,” Jianchun added.
