Uche Cecil Izuora
Nigeria and United Arab Emirates (UAE) are close to inking new partnership deals to strengthen existing energy and trade ties.
The UAE is a significant trading partner with Nigeria, with 2024 data showing total bilateral trade (including non-oil) exceeding $4.3 billion in 2024.
Nigeria exports commodities such as gold, agricultural products, and crude oil, while the UAE supplies refined petroleum, automobiles, and technology, with the UAE emerging as a top foreign investor in Nigeria, boosting sectors like infrastructure and energy.
Both countries are expected to sign multiple agreements as part of the Abu Dhabi Sustainability Summit.
Nigeria’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Yusuf Tuggar, disclosed this on Monday, ahead of the presentation of Nigeria’s address by President Bola Tinubu, as well as bilateral meetings scheduled with global leaders at the ongoing summit
Tuggar, providing insights, disclosed that the summit, which happens in between the Conference of Parties COP, meetings, is a follow-up to the last COP event in Brazil and is expected to help concretise some of the agreements that have been reached at the Brazil meeting
Tuggar revealed that the Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week would provide the opportunity to extract investments in certain tangible projects and strengthen commitments in funding, perhaps, what had been agreed upon at the COP meeting in Brazil last year.
He revealed further that Nigeria, which has a deficit in terms of project preparation, would use the opportunity to secure some investments, especially in the area of gas-to-power.
“So this presents an opportunity to come with identified projects and try and source the funding from some of the countries and the organisations that are going to be in attendance. Last year, Nigeria also participated in that previous event.
“President Tinubu is going to have a bilateral meeting with the President of the United Arab Emirates, His Highness Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan.
“One of the things to be discussed there is the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement, which is expected to be signed during that bilateral agreement”, he noted.
The agreement will help to concretise some of the discussions that have been ongoing and some of the investment opportunities as several investors from the UAE are said to be waiting for the agreement to be signed, as guaranteed that their investments will be protected.
“Once it’s signed and they come in with the investments. On the Nigerian side, it also protects the investment of Nigerians”, he said.
Many Nigerian businessmen and women doing business in Dubai are eagerly waiting for the agreement.
According to him, “Some actually even have factories and so forth. So, this further protects them, and it also dignifies Nigeria.
“For us, we want to ensure that the dignity of Nigerians is upheld and Nigerians are respected wherever they go to invest, wherever they go to visit.
“The agreements will be in the areas of gas, especially to attract investors in gas for electricity.
“We have a lot of gas, and we need to ensure that we develop that gas to power electricity.
“You can see that all these outages that we are encountering is partly to do with the fact that we had not invested enough in turning that gas to power.
“So now we have a lot of pipelines being constructed. We have even a licensing round going on for acreage.
“That means more businesses will invest further in exploration and then subsequently, of course, production. So that is one aspect”, he said
Other areas to be covered also include trade, especially agricultural commodities and manufacturing
“We’ve had challenges in the past with airline operators, their money being stuck and all of that. It was when President Tinubu came in that all of that was resolved. Now you can see that Nigerians are actually even travelling abroad and using their cards, their bank cards here.
“You can come and use it, and there’s no restriction to say, oh no, there’s a limit. You can only spend $2,000 or something. So for business people, it’s very important.
“But these sorts of agreements further facilitate these things