President Bola Tinubu actively courted leaders from pivotal partner nations to encourage investments in Nigeria during his engagements at the G20 summit.
According to a statement from Ajuri Ngelale, the president’s spokesperson, Tinubu held meetings with leaders from Germany, South Korea, and India on the sidelines of the summit.
Tinubu’s early arrival in New Delhi for the G20 summit marked him as the first head of state to attend, responding to the invitation extended to Nigeria by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Notably, Modi also extended an invitation to the African Union (AU), officially welcoming them into the circle of the world’s top 20 global economies.
Speaking with Olaf Scholz, the German chancellor, at the summit, Tinubu said his administration is designing a financial architecture for an expanded economic partnership with a nation like Germany.
He said Nigeria is orchestrating its economic policies to align with large-scale manufacturers like Volkswagen, a German company.
“It is not, for us, only a matter of designing the financial architecture for an expanded economic partnership. It is also about the practicality of aligning the perspectives of your large-scale manufacturers, such as Volkswagen and others, with the reality of the new incentives my government is putting in place for them to come and prosper across multiple value chains and sectors inside of our country,” the president told the German leader.
On his part, Scholz acknowledged the “business friendly” policies of Tinubu, adding that Nigeria and Germany share economic history.
He promised to visit the president in Nigeria in October.
“Thank you for this important discussion, Mr. President. I appreciate this opportunity to advance our economic relations. Your market is unique and our companies have a history in Nigeria,” he said.
“We acknowledge the business-friendly reforms you have put in place. I am happy to inform you of my desire to visit you in Nigeria in October, which will allow us to carry forward these initiatives.”
In his discussion with Yoon Suk Yeol, the president of South Korea, Tinubu stressed the need for partnership in the areas of production, telecommunications, technology, and oil and gas.
Tinubu said: “We will leave nothing hanging. We will finalise what we agree to and we will execute. We will work point by point with you to secure rapidly implementable MoUs across sectors of partnership that will involve the active presence of your biggest firms.”
Speaking with Modi, the president appreciated the tremendous development in India under the leadership of the prime minister, and noted that “there are many lessons our nation can learn from the rapid progress of India”.
“We see fantastic opportunity between our nations across sectors, such as agricultural development, but specifically, there is more we can do to advance ICT innovation and the emergence of Blue-Chip FinTech growth in Africa. Nigeria has the local players who can drive it from the front,” the president said.
Modi in response to Tinubu the teams of both countries must now stay close in touch “to detail our priority areas of upscaled cooperation with respect to agriculture, defence, industries, capacity building, and even FinTech growth”.
“I see your commitment,” the Indian president said.
“We believe there are immense prospects for Nigeria in the UPI (Unified Payments Interface) and we will ensure that we come together and make progress on these fronts very rapidly.”
Apart from these three leaders, Tinubu also had discussions with U.S. President Joe Biden; Ursula Von Der Leyen, president of the European Commission (EC); and Ajay Banga, president of the World Bank.
