Ambassador of the People’s Republic of China to Nigeria, Cui Jianchun, has called for a strong political party for effective leadership to achieve Nigeria’s developmental goals.
Cui spoke yesterday in Abuja at a roundtable to discuss “the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC): Outcomes and Significance for Nigeria and Africa”.
The 20th National Congress of the CPC was held between October 16 and October 22, 2022 in Beijing, China to appraise the developmental strides of the country and plan for the next five years.
The roundtable was organised by the Centre for China Studies in collaboration with the Chinese Embassy in Abuja to draw lessons from the CPC as the mainstream party that transformed the fortunes of China to a great economic and manufacturing hub of the world today.
Cui said China had been able to attain its development strides and pull its over 1.4 billion population out of poverty under the CPC’s effective people’s policy.
He said that Nigeria can learn from China’s political ideology and let strong parties lead the country and ensure they implement their campaign programmes for the benefit of the people.
“I have talked to the party leaders; we believe that the two major parties and all the eighteen parties can benefit from the CPC 20th National Congress. I had the opportunity to share my ideas. Really, we believe that CPC can do a lot for the party building Nigeria because I believe the party is not only about power, it is really about people.
“It is about development; it is about how we can lead the nation to achieve the good vision. We are continuing to do the information sharing next week. We think that we need a strong party in Nigeria, we need a party to lead the nation.
“The Chinese philosophy is that the party is not only for the platform, the manifesto of the campaign but most importantly, how can we implement the manifestos of the party.
“Chinese lessons, Chinese experience can be shared with the Nigerian side,” Cui said.
In his remarks, the director, Centre for China Studies, Charles Onunaiju, said Africa and Nigeria had benefitted from the Communist Party-led government of China in terms of infrastructure development in major sectors of the economy.
Onunaiju said that the completed Lekki Deep Sea Port which would make Nigeria a Maritime hub in West-Africa was an initiative of the China-Africa cooperation especially since Nigeria engaged in the Belt and Road Initiative designed by China in 2013.
Contributing, Senator Shehu Sani said that there was a lot Nigeria needs to learn from China, especially periodic meetings of political parties to discuss successes, challenges and way forward.
Shehu also urged the Chinese government to create opportunities for Nigerian political leaders to participate in the CPC’s National Congress to learn from them and apply it to the Nigerian situation.
