Nigeria’s business environment lauded by Indian High Commissioner as investments surge

DAILY TRUST

The Indian High Commissioner to Nigeria, Mr Shri G. Balasubramanian, spoke to Weekend Trust exclusively on the business environment in Nigeria and why Indian companies are finding the country a fertile ground to invest. He also spoke about trade relations and cultural exchanges between the two countries. Excerpts:

Can you describe the current state of bilateral relations between Nigeria and India?

India and Nigeria have very strong relations which date back to two years before Nigeria’s independence when we established our diplomatic office in 1958. Since then, we have had a wonderful relationship, and the political leadership on both sides have invested so much in developing this relationship as much as possible. This has been possible only because of the importance India attaches to Nigeria. That is why we opened two years before your independence. You are the giant of Africa.

Both India and Nigeria have many similarities. Both of us are multicultural, multi-ethnic, multi-linguistic societies, with large populations in our own respective geographies, and we have such similarities which actually work in our favour in terms of understanding each other.

There’s a large Indian community in Nigeria. Similarly, there’s a sufficiently large number of Nigerians who have gone to India for studies or work or for medical treatment, and so on. So, the relationship is, I would say in one word, fantastic, and we’ll continue to work towards further strengthening this relationship.

You said that there’s a large community of Indians in Nigeria. Can you give us numbers?

I don’t have the exact numbers but it would be in the range of about 50,000 or so throughout Nigeria. Most of them are concentrated in Lagos, many of them in Kano, Abuja and in almost every other state of Nigeria.

What are the key areas of cooperation between India and Nigeria, and how do you see this evolving in the future?

When India took over the presidency of G20, because of our ongoing relationship and because of the confidence that we have in Nigeria, India had invited Nigeria as a guest country for G20 and that was the first time Nigeria was invited to G20 and which has now subsequently paved way for Brazil inviting Nigeria and hopefully South Africa next year.

Also, we had our Prime Minister visit in 2007 and His Excellency, President Tinubu visited India in 2023. There have been a series of visits at the political level; whether it is the foreign minister from India, the Foreign Minister from Nigeria or the Defence Minister from India. The National Security Adviser just completed the second counter-terrorism dialogue in India. So, we have wonderful cooperation on the political level.

On the trade and economic level, I would say that Nigeria is the largest trading partner for India in Africa, and we are one of the top five trading partners for Nigeria. More than 200 Indian companies have established manufacturing facilities and have worked here for more than four decades, so much so that they have invested about $27 billion. So, our relationship on trade and economic relations is wonderful.

On people-to-people contact, I would say that capacity building has been one of our strong points. We have trained more than 500 Nigerian friends every year on a complete full scholarship from the government of India. Students are also going to India given the good facilities that are available for education in India.