According to Vanguard: The Spanish Ambassador to Nigeria, Alfonso Sebastian de Erice yesterday said that the Spanish government has been a closed ally of Nigeria and spent £6.5 billion to import oil and gas from the country in 2014.
The Spanish Ambassador who disclosed this when he paid a courtesy visit to the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara in Abuja also disclosed that Spain has signed a Memorandum of Understanding, MoU, with the country and relevant agencies on the training of security personnel and anti-terrorism.
Erice further informed the Speaker that his country was ready to partner with Nigeria in providing necessary assistance in the transformation of the existing refineries as part of efforts to boost local production of crude oil.
While commending the bilateral relations existing between Spain and Nigeria, he expressed his country’s readiness to partner Nigeria in the area of agricultural development.
According to him, “Spain is one of the partners of Nigeria, the first or the second best client. We buy £6.5 billion of oil and gas. Yes we are very happy with the exchanges that we have, we need the oil but we want to diversify because we think it’s very important that our economic relations do not be only in gas and petrol, we have to diversify.
“We want to cooperate with you in agriculture, we have very good agricultural industry, we have comparative advantage in tourism, manufacturing, you have people who are very well prepared. We have several treaties that allow us to work here. It’s a domain that we will have to explore. For us the oil business is important because we need it but we want to diversity and I know that Nigerian authorities also want to diversify.”
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