Yewande Sadiku, executive secretary of the Nigerian Investment Promotion Commission (NIPC), has called for the renegotiation of 80 percent of the bilateral agreements signed in the past.
Sadiku, who was appointed by President Muhammadu Buhari in 2016, made this known during an interview on Arise TV on Monday.
The NIPC boss said treaties made in the past by the Nigerian government needs to be modernised in order to ensure that targetted investments are in line with the sustainable development goals.
Sadiku said: “As with all government agencies, we worked with limited resources, so we thought it would be good to define where NIPC has to focus its energy. In the context of investment generally, we defined the ethos that should drive Nigeria’s investment search,”
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“We defined it as Responsible Inclusive Balance and Sustainable (RIBS). So the first thing we did in that regard is to look at the quality of the bilateral investment treaties that Nigeria has signed over the years.
“Apart from reforming the template that we then used to negotiate investment agreements going forward, that review gave us a startling picture.
“We saw that something like 80 percent of the bilateral investment treaties that we signed in the past needs to be renegotiated and modernised to ensure that they can achieve the kind of investment that we want. An investment that moves us towards Sustainable Development Goals.”
