ForMin Aurescu - meeting with Nigerian counterpart: Romania, fully committed to developing relations with Nigeria

Romania is fully committed to developing relations with the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Minister of Foreign Affairs Bogdan Aurescu said, on Friday, mentioning that he also discussed with his counterpart, Geoffrey Onyeama, who is visiting Bucharest, about the possibility of importing oil and gas from the African country, Agerpres reports.

The heads of the Romanian and Nigerian diplomacy signed a memorandum of understanding between the Ministries of Foreign Affairs of the two countries.

"The Minister's visit to Romania represents a first in our recent bilateral history, because it's for the first time in the past 30 years that a Minister of Foreign Affairs of Nigeria is visiting Romania. We have, now, an excellent opportunity to relaunch and consolidate friendly relations between our countries, traditional relations of friendship consolidated over time, in a moment in which cooperation at the international level to overcome regional and global challenges is more stringent than ever. Today, we had the opportunity to sign together the memorandum of understanding between the Ministries of Foreign Affairs of the two countries which allows us to better organize our interaction and thus stimulate better, more efficiently the bilateral cooperation in all domains of common interest," Aurescu told a joint press conference held together with his Nigerian counterpart.

According to Aurescu, consultations were "very consistent, substantive, on very many dimensions of the bilateral relation, in an atmosphere of openness and friendship."

"Romania is fully committed to developing relations with the Federal Republic of Nigeria. We discussed about the boosting of our bilateral relations, with regard to political, economic dialogue, as well as to sectoral dialogue and we noted our joint, concrete and real interest in diversifying cooperation in many domains: from education, culture and inter-human contact, to economy, including the defence industry, security, including cybersecurity, IT and digitization, energy, agriculture, as well as in the consular domain," added Minister Aurescu.

The Romanian official mentioned that there is increased potential in regard to the export of agricultural products from Romania to Nigeria, including through the facilitation of exports from Ukraine. The discussions also focused on facilitating exports of animal origin from our country for which the necessary certificates must be obtained from the Nigerian authorities.

At the same time, minister Aurescu said, the parties convened to reactivate the Joint bilateral economic committee, as a mechanism of consultation between Governments and will lead to the development of economic relations.

"There are very many opportunities which must be transformed into reality, given the existing potential, but also the fact that Nigeria is presently the largest economy of Africa, with important natural resources, including the most important oil resources in Africa, Nigeria being 8th in the world in this chapter. Otherwise, we discussed about the possibility to import petrol and gas from Nigeria," Bogdan Aurescu explained.

He emphasized that he encouraged the increase in the number of Nigerian youths who take university courses in Romania, mentioning that, in the past five years, over 1,400 youths from the African state came to study in our country.

"We also discussed about the solutions offered by the Romanian authorities to young students who wish to continue their studies after having to leave Ukraine against the backdrop of the war in the neighboring country," Aurescu indicated.

The Romanian minister mentioned that the meeting also approached topics regarding recent regional developments in Eastern Europe and Sub-saharan Africa, as well as the situation regarding the war in Ukraine.

"We presented our values on the topic of the war in the neighboring country, including from the perspective of the impact on food security and energy security at the global level and we resumed the condemnation in the firmest terms of the illegal aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine. Furthermore, we emphasized the support that Romania has granted to Ukrainian refugees, but also for the repatriation of citizens of other countries, including citizens of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, over 1,160 persons from Nigeria, who lived or studied in Ukraine," said Bogdan Aurescu.