Reps, UAE Envoy parley on ratification of investment, Air Service agreements, others

The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Honourable Femi Gbajabiamila on Thursday assured the United Arab Emirate (UAE) of the 9th Assembly’s resolve to fast-track the ratification of the six bilateral agreements signed between Nigeria and the UAE authorities.

Honourable Gbajabiamila who gave the assurance in Abuja, during an interactive session with the UAE Ambassador to Nigeria, Dr Fahad Ai’-Taffaq, applauded the ingenuity of UAE in the area of economic and infrastructural development.

According to him, “for us, we always look for cooperation, we always look for friends and we always look for people we can enhance and grow our relationship with, as a legislature and as a country. Of course, yours is a model state.

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“Your remarkable growth and development over the years is something we all look to emulate or replicate here in Nigeria. There is no doubt and no question that we want to open up new shores and new avenues and new frontiers beyond our traditional trading partners.

“And the UAE, obviously, is already calling and yearning for investments across the border with Nigeria and bilateral relations between the two countries.

“Your agreements which you have talked about, I am well aware that we have domesticated some of them. There are six of them, with two outstanding.

“Luckily the Chairman on Treaties, Protocols and Agreements is here, coincidentally, and I am sure he will take this up as soon as we get back on Tuesday. I am not sure where they are yet, if they have been sent or what stage but it is something that we will fast track to make things easier between the two countries.

“The President has been there because he is interested in exploring avenues for a good working bilateral relationship between the two countries and we are looking forward to your elections on the 22nd of September. We are looking forward to the parliamentary cooperation, as you have put it, between the two legislative arms of the governments, I am sure we can borrow from us and we can borrow from you.”

Speaking earlier, UAE Ambassador to Nigeria, Dr Fahad Al-Tafaq, had solicited for the timely ratification of the outstanding agreements by the National Assembly, expressed optimism that both countries will sign several cooperation in the future.

“We have had several engagements and cooperations opportunities between the UAE and Nigeria over the past few years, latest of which is the visit of President Muhammadu Buhari to the UAE back in April 2019, where they had successful deliberation on many fronts.

“Economic fronts, investment fronts, humanitarian, climate change and others. We have had also received Buhari in 2016 where we signed six agreement between the UAE and Nigeria four of which are ratified and two awaiting ratification of the Nigerians side especially the Investment Protection and Double Taxation agreements.

“We also have one more pending agreement which is the Air Service Agreement between, these agreements bring along of prosperity, a lot of opportunities especially for the business people and for investors and for people who would like to establish themselves either in the UAE or in Nigeria to access the African market and from the UAE side you access the Asian and European, middle east market.

“We have several projects ongoing in Nigeria in the fields of economy, we have several trade mission from Dubai to Nigeria masters of which happened in December 2018 in Lagos, we had other visits in March on Tourism to explore the opportunities of enhancing tourism in the UAE and Nigeria including health.

“We are yet to witness more and more cooperations in the future, we have had successful participation from both sides into local, international and global conferences and forums between the UAE and Nigeria.

“We are expecting a delegation to come to Lagos a few weeks from today to participate in the tourism fair. We have had successful outcome of such bilateral visits one of which is the establishment of a UAE based food processing company in Lagos and that was after the visit to Lagos in 2018.

“I think the potential is there, the political will is there, both leader in line with the objectives that needs to be achieved for our nations. I thank you today for discussing some of the pending items especially the agreements and I hope that very near in the future we will see them ratified and see more and more cooperation.”