By Joy Odor
The Minister in the Prime Minister’s Office of Singapore, Dr Maliki Osman on Thursday met with Amb. Dunoma Ahmed, the Permanent-Secretary, Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) on bilateral trade, renewable energy, political consultations to continue the long relationship as the fourth largest trading partner in Sub-Saharan Africa, amounted to 500 million Singapore Dollars in goods.
Osman who is the Second Minister of Education and Foreign Affairs of Singapore visit to Nigeria was a move aimed to boost economic growth, address energy challenges, and foster stronger diplomatic ties in new areas of growth and youth development.
According to him, Singapore Bilateral trade in services worth 1.3 billion Singapore Dollars in 2022 and Nigeria continues to be an attractive destination for Singapore companies.
“As at 2022, Singapore companies invested over 4.5 billion U.S. dollars into Nigeria and these companies have strong interest in Nigeria’s agribusiness, oil and gas, transport and logistics, and infrastructure sectors.
“Both countries have been strengthening economic relations through various agreements, including Nigeria-Singapore Bilateral Investment Treaty and Singapore-Nigeria Air Services Agreement, to promote investment and facilitate trade between them.
“We are happy to see interest from Singapore companies. We are in Lagos Free Zone, the first private-owned free zone in Nigeria with a deep-seaport operated by Tolaram Venture, a Singapore Company.
“We welcome stronger bilateral and political consultations between Singapore and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Nigeria, and support developmental pathways of Nigeria through Singapore cooperation programme, technical capacity development.
Osman however invited Amb. Yusuf Tuggar, Minister of Foreign Affairs, to Singapore to participate in the 2025 High Level Ministerial visit often organised every two years for friends from Africa to see Singapore to commemorate their 55th anniversary of diplomatic relations.
“This is to learn more about Singapore, bring business delegations to Singapore, and participate in the Singapore Africa Business Forum, which takes place every two years.
“It is a forum where we connect the business communities from the African continent with Singapore and those who are doing business in the Southeast Asian region.
“We agree that there are many new areas of opportunities for young people in Nigeria with population within the middle age of 17 years shows great potential for manpower development.
“Singapore has gone through very fast paced development and we have seen how important it is for human development, as a key driving force that is naturally what Singapore was like.
“I will be meeting the Minister of Education to further discuss our potential collaboration.
“There is a proposal on technical vocational training for Nigerian young people and we are looking at those proposals, to see how we can advance relationships through support to our Nigerian counterparts” he noted.
Earlier, Amb. Dunoma Ahmed, Permanent-Secretary, Ministry of Foreign Affairs Informed that Nigeria would look at technical assistance by Singapore to Nigerians, in terms of capacity building; also existing trade relations and the need to strengthen the relationship between the two countries.
According to him, by strengthening these areas, Nigeria aims to create a more sustainable and prosperous future for its citizens, while also playing a more significant role in global affairs.
Ahmed maintained that the federal government would create an enabling environment for businesses to thrive and charged the delegation to work closely with it to strengthen trade cooperation between the two countries, to explore new areas of collaboration through trade.
The Per Secretary lauded the contributions by Singapore in the economic sphere in Nigeria GDP and job creation, as President Bola Tinubu’s administration is diversifying the economy into non-oil areas.
“These include mining, agriculture, renewable energy and tourism; we invite Singaporean companies interested in such areas to come and invest, as Nigeria is now one of the most attractive investment destinations globally” he said.
