Team arrives this month

From Juliana Taiwo-Obalonye, Abuja

Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Emmanuel Kachikwu has disclosed that as a result of the fallout from the July Road show in China, where Nigeria signed a $75.6 billion Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in investment in the oil sector, the Federal Government is expecting close to $4 billion loan facility from the Asian country.
He said the loan facilities for oil industry infrastructures is expected even as a 40-man Chinese investment team is expected to arrive the country at the end of this month.
Kachikwu, who said his ministry briefed the Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting on the outcome of the road show, told State House correspondents that the MOUs signed during the road show has a gestation period of about one year as both countries set up their teams on bilateral lines to look at specific areas of investment interests.
“It is still work in progress; we are having a team of over 40 Chinese, members of some of those bodies, about visiting Nigeria by the end of this month. We are also setting up a full inter-ministerial panel that will be deliberating with them for each of those sectoral investments.
“I will say that the target we had, while going to China, was to raise
$40 billion, which is the total cost of our infrastructure gap for the oil industry.
The management of the country’s state oil company had, subsequently, announced the signing of MoUs with some Chinese companies worth over $50 billion for infrastructure development.
The Minister of Power, Housing and Urban Development, Babatunde Fashola also seized the occasion to explain why federal government places roads like the Lagos-Ibadan expressway on priority list.
He said certain roads were on priority list in order to evacuate the energy needs of the nation and prevent the nation from grinding to a halt.  The roads he said are to provide critical support to keep the economies of the country going.
“I think we need to properly identify the nomenclature of some of these roads. The fact that the roads are in the FCT does not necessarily make them federal roads. Secondly, the point also to make is that our ability to intervene is constrained by our budget. You cannot build a road without appropriation and authorisation for it.