BREAKING NEWS, Politics
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President Muhammadu Buhari is off to South Africa for a meeting of the China-Africa Corporation Forum on Friday, December 4
PRESIDENT Muhammadu Buhari today travelled to South Africa for the China-Africa Corporation Forum in Johannesburg which starts on Friday, December 4.
Garba Shehu, senior special assistant to the president on Media and Publicity, in a statement said that Buhari would follow up on his meeting with the Chinese leader Xi Jinping which took place on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly meeting in November in New York.
“President Buhari had indicated to Xi Jinping, the Chinese leader at the bilateral meeting in New York that he wanted China to re-commence stalled rail projects under new terms that would see China providing nearly all the financing required. Of particular interest is the coastal railway project stretching for 1402 kilometers linking Lagos in the West with Calabar in the East; a project that is expected to be financed with 12 billion U.S Dollars Chinese loan and which will create about 200,000 jobs,” the statement said.
Another rail project that will be up for renegotiation is the $8.3billion Lagos-Kano standard gauge modernisation project, of which only a segment, Kaduna-Abuja has reached completion stage.
Buhari is also expected to discuss ways of removing all obstacles in the way of the 3,050 MW Mambila Power Station, considered a strategic project which was conceived in 1982 but has not taken off.
According to the statement, the Chinese president had informed President Buhari of the willingness of his country to finance the whole project through a special loan agreement.
President Buhari is accompanied by Geoffrey Onyema, minister of foreign Affairs, Chubuike Amaechi, minister of transportation, and Okechukwu Enelamah, minister of industry, Trade and Investment. He will return to Abuja with his entourage on Saturday, December 5.
— Dec 3, 2015 @ 9:00 GMT
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