by Alkasim Abdulkadir

China he said will continue to make efforts to balance bilateral trade and train talents for Nigeria; he also called on Nigeria to create favourable conditions and a fair environment for Chinese companies.

China has concluded plans to export some of its cultures to Nigeria. This is aside the railway construction and bilateral trades going on.
China has one of the world’s oldest cultures, dating back to more than a thousand years before Christ. Its rich repertoire of culture has fascinated people all over the world for several hundreds of years; from its literature, architecture, cuisine, visual arts, martial arts, religion, music and philosophy. It is this diverse cultural canvas that Nigeria is set to benefit from.
It all started with a state visit to China by President Goodluck Ebele Goodluck Jonathan to his counterpart Chinese President Xi Jinping, from 9th to the 12 of July 2013. The focus of the trip was to strengthen bilateral partnership, especially along the lines of the China-Africa relations.

During the trip President Jinping said the aim of the visit was to promote common development, that China and Nigeria can strengthen pragmatic cooperation in the fields of infrastructure, trade, investment, energy, aerospace, agriculture and the construction of economic cooperation zones, defense and security.

China he said will continue to make efforts to balance bilateral trade and train talents for Nigeria; he also called on Nigeria to create favourable conditions and a fair environment for Chinese companies.
Notably Xi said the two countries should expand cultural exchanges to consolidate the friendship between the two peoples.

While in China, President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan said Nigeria and China enjoyed several common interests and there was a great potential for cooperation.
He also stated that Nigeria was committed to developing friendly ties with China and was also ready to work with China to improve the cooperative mechanism and expand mutually beneficial cooperation, President Jonathan had further stated. After the talks, both leaders signed a number of cooperative documents, covering areas including the economy and trade, finance and culture.

It was in furtherance to the bilateral agreements that the Federal Government of Nigeria solicited for China’s support in ensuring standardization of the country’s arts and crafts. This was against the poor backdrop of inadequate machinery and skills capacity to finish arts and crafts to international exportable standards.

Minister of Tourism, Culture and National Orientation Chief Edem Duke, was at hand to receive the delegation from China, which was led by China’s Vice Minister of Culture, Mr Ding Wei.
Duke said “Nigeria, with a population of 170 million people, has 170 million unique creativity and talents, and each and every one of us with the creativity of our minds and dexterity of our hands, there are things that we can do.
“That is why we in the ministry have established 12 cultural industries at the end of the first half of 2013 in eight states of the federation.
“And the challenges that we often have is that of quality control, maintaining standardization for our arts and crafts.
“We will like to have a few experts from China to help us in the development of technical quality of Nigerian arts and crafts.”
According to him, this would help to put the country’s cultural market in the international market and grow the economic.
Duke said the ministry had decided to strengthen the bi-literal relationship with China through the celebration of the second cultural week in Nanjing Province in China to be held in the month of October 2013. He said the event would witness cultural performances by troupes from Nigeria, exhibition, symposium and a lecture to highlight the essence of Nigeria culture.

During the visit to Nigeria, Wei appealed to the Nigerian government to join China in ensuring the adequate implementation of the Beijing Action Plan, which seeks the active promotion of Chinese culture to the world. To this end he said China was partnering Nigeria to ensure that Chinese cultural centers were highly educative and informative to teach and promote both countries’ culture.

The Chinese government as part of its cultural collaboration with Nigeria has stated that plans were underway for an exchange training programmes for Nigerian arts and craftsmen to ensure quality control, standard and profit maximization.

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