‘India gives high priority to strategic partnership with Nigeria’: PM Modi

In Nigeria for the first leg of his three-nation tour, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday said India accords “high priority” to its strategic partnership with the host nation.

“We give high priority to our strategic partnership with Nigeria…I am confident that a new chapter in our ties will begin following our talks,” PM Modi said in his opening remarks of the bilateral meeting with Nigerian president Bola Ahmed Tinubu, who invited him for the visit, the first by an Indian premier in 17 years.

He added, “We have been sending 20 tonnes of relief supplies for people hit by last month’s floods.”

The prime minister arrived in Nigeria’s capital Abuja on Sunday morning. He called the 60,000-strong expatriate Indian community, the largest in west Africa, a “key pillar” in the relationship between the countries.

He also mentioned the inclusion of the African Union as a permanent member of the G20 bloc at the September 2023 summit in New Delhi, describing it as a “significant outcome.”

The ties between India-Nigeria were elevated to the status of a “strategic partnership” when then prime minister Dr. Manmohan Singh, PM Modi’s predecessor, visited the African state in October 2007.

The two nations have been close partners for more than 60 years. India’s first diplomatic mission in Nigeria opened in 1958, two years before the latter country formally gained independence from the British rule, which ended in India in 1947.