Nigeria and Australia have enjoyed bilateral relations in the past as well as presently. In this media chat with Bukola Ogunsina, Jonathan Richardson, High Commissioner for Australia to Nigeria discloses more on the dynamic relations both countries enjoy.
What is your experience working in Nigeria?
Well it has been very rewarding from the point of view of someone who is interested in African issues and spent time in West Africa,
in what is now Africa’s largest economy. It’s very rewarding to be here professionally at an interesting time and see how Nigeria is addressing those huge challenges of a relatively young African state in what is historically a short space of time and building up institutions as well as developing the country economically. Also, in terms of expanding our own bilateral relationship, it’s been a rewarding time too, because I think we continue to expand the different fronts on which we are working in Nigeria and increasing trade relations, business and investment contacts in particular, as well as our development cooperation and some of the activities in that view.
How has the political and diplomatic relationship been between both countries?
On the political and diplomatic front, we can say we have expanded the size of our presence in our mission here in Abuja, Nigeria. We have instituted for the first time, ministry to ministry senior official talks which usually brings together annually senior officials from foreign ministries and also from other relevant ministries dealing with bilateral issues and international cooperation. So, that was a positive step forward. I can also say the visit by former president Jonathan to Australia in 2011 when he attended the Commonwealth Heads Of Government Meeting and also a bilateral visit afterwards, was possibly the first time we had a visit of that nature by a Nigerian Head Of state.
What about the economic relationship?
On the economic side, I think we have seen expansion in a number of areas. We’ve had a number of mining companies working on exploration projects, trying to develop new projects in Nigeria for a number of years, and we are happy that some of those will come to fruition in the near future as actual producing mines. Also we are seeing quite a number of Australian companies with strong international reputations working in what I would broadly describe as the infrastructure, construction, and engineering field. Some of these are engineering consultancy companies.
Can you name a few of them?
Yes I can. One of them is one of our biggest engineering companies in Australia called SMEC. It was developed out of the huge post war project in Australia called the Snowy Mountains Electricity Cooperation, a huge hydroelectric and irrigation scheme which was a big part of Australia’s development, or second world war development. After that development finished, it was turned into a private company which has a lot of work in many developing countries around the world, and in particular, planning all sorts of infrastructure, engineering, development in all their works. They have recently set up an office in West Africa, Nigeria. AURECON is another very large engineering and consultancy firm in Australia.
What projects are these companies currently undertaking in Nigeria?
SMEC has recently been able to do a whole range of things from transport links to roads. I think its earliest projects here involved the designing and planning of dams, water catchments and also, infrastructure, transport roads to electricity power supply and transmission. Also, I know AURECON, the other company I mentioned, have been involved in projects in more than half the states of Nigeria in the last decade. One of our largest engineering companies, which does some of the same work, is involved in a very large venture in oil services and technology sector called, Delta Afrique. Delta Afrique is a Nigerian company but its financial structure is a joint venture with an Australian company, Worley Parsons. We have another large mining, contracting and civil engineering company called Macmahon, which is doing mining work at the moment. They are actually mining limestone for cement. They do the contracting, the actual digging and moving of the material. So that is four or five major companies.
How is the agricultural relations between both countries faring?
We have a growing potential trade in agriculture. Australia has been selling a significant amount of wheat over the last couple of years. The wheat is largely imported by flour milling companies in Nigeria. So, if you are taking those from certain companies you might actually be having wheat from Australia or processed products from Australia. We have also been trying to encourage contacts between Australian and Nigerian companies and institutions in the agricultural field. Apart from wheat we do not expect to be necessarily selling lots of Australian products that can be grown here. I think from Nigeria’s point of view, the potential is there for some Australian companies to be providing services in technology, transfer and expertise for Nigerian entrepreneurs and farmers, largely farming entrepreneurs. We have encouraged and facilitated some contacts in that area. In some of the industry that I talked about for Nigeria’s agricultural development, particularly commercial agriculture, we have some very strong agricultural industries across the board which are very export oriented. We are the largest exporter of beef in the world and fourth largest exporter of sugar. For example, Nigeria has plans to, under the previous government, establish a home grown, domestic, sugar industry. This requires different technology from methods to grow sugarcane, managing the soils the water and tilling the fields to technology for harvesting and also for the mills that process the sugar.
Concerning the educational sector, what has been the mutual benefits?
Australian institutions might wish to get involved in areas such as technical education. We believe we have a fairly strong vocation and technical education for technical and trade skills which many leaders and experts in Nigeria have said is very important for the economy and not just have people with university degrees but how you deliver that training and so forth is the big question. Broadly our education contacts in general have expanded very rapidly in recent years in a couple of ways, particularly Nigerian students who are attending universities in Australia. Their numbers have actually gone up very rapidly from about 400 students enrolled in 2010. Latest figures I just got the other day say they are now about 1,600. A number of our universities have been establishing direct ties with Nigerian universities. Recently we had a visit from The University of Lagos to The University of New Castle in Australia. Quite a big university and perhaps some fruitful cooperation develops out of that. Murdoch University has had a good relationship with OAU for example. So those ties are building. The Vice Chancellor of the University of Ibadan is one of a few African members of the Australia Africa Universities Network. I should mention capacity building. We have done that in particular through scholarship and training programme called the Australia Awards, and since 2010 we have had more than 220 Nigerians attend courses and programmes in Australia under that programme.
What are presently the development projects embarked upon?
We do quite a bit of development work at the grassroots. In fact, the largest project is implemented through an international NGO called CBN which has a fairly comprehensive programme working in a number of states to help people with disabilities, particularly in empowerment, people in disabilities in areas of rehabilitation. For example people with visual impairment. But there are also aspects of mental health and physical disabilities. It’s covered a number of states and it’s been quite a successful programme. I think the total investment value of the assistance since 2013, is worth about 420 million naira, working with a range of institutions and organisations in different states. We also have our High Commission itself. We have what we call our direct aid programme with small grants, aimed at local and national organisations doing small but practical development projects in some capacity building in certain areas.
How is Australia currently assisting Nigeria to curb terrorism?
We have offered in principle to support in ways that Nigeria would see appropriate. The main area that we have made a concrete contribution is support for programmes developed by the Nigerian government through other organisations to combat violent extremism. This is more like a sort of long term educational focus to combat some of the roots of radicalisation, supporting other programmes that the government designed in the education system and also a project that was designed and implemented at Bayero University in Kano which related to training of Imams specifically in that area. It was a project we believe was promising. We do not have very specific support in the military field, however I think that in principle it could happen. But Nigeria is having good cooperation with other international partners in that area so it is not being the focus of our attention. We have also supported a managerial and initiative in which Nigeria is involved in which is called, Global Community Engagement And Resilience Fund (GCERF) which is an international initiative based in Switzerland but funded by a number of countries that’s essentially looking at ways of strengthening the capacity of local grassroots organisations to combat violent extremism which provide the roots, the soil for terrorism.
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