Prof Akhaine, one of those to speak at the occasion
The online platform, Maroon Square, is putting together a fiesta of ideas March 21st and 22nd, 2019 in Lagos, Nigeria. Its publicity to that effect shows that it would first be engaging “Nigeria’s Debt Crisis: Journey to Where” and this would be followed by “Chinese Investment in Nigeria: An Imperial Project?
It has selected two activists to lead the intellectual battle. While Prof Odion Akhaine of the Department of Political Science, Lagos State University, will be taking on the question on Nigeria’s debt, Osaze Nosaze, a former Executive Director of the Civil Liberties Organisation, (CLO) would be on hand to lead the interrogation of the essence of Chinese investment in Nigeria, nay Africa.
Issues such as the implications of public debt or the interest behind China’s massive presence in countries such as Nigeria have not been part of the public sphere menu in contemporary Nigeria. Yet, debts has implications for the democracy everyone appears keen about just as China is the newest great power in town, certain to, like all others before it, enact itself on the world stage. An interrogation of ‘China in Nigeria’ as a sub-set of ‘China in Africa’ might thus not be a bad idea.
