“Excellent and successful” is how President Cyril Ramaphosa described his state visit to the Federal Republic of Nigeria which concluded on Wednesday following bilateral discussions between the two economic giants on the continent.

Departing Nigeria for Côte d’Ivoire the President said: “We leave Nigeria very pleased, full of smiles to our next destination”.

“We’ve had a really excellent and successful visit to Nigeria, we’ve had extensive discussions with President [Mohammadu] Buhari on a one on one basis and reached a lot of areas of understanding and mutual agreement.

“Our Ministers have done a superb job in terms of negotiating the many agreements, memoranda of understanding, some of the agreements are going to be finalised once we get home and we get a cabinet minute,” the President said.

Altogether, the two countries have 32 agreements while three more have been added to the portfolio. He said implementation is going to be closely monitored by both Heads of State.

“We will particularly look at the various outcomes of the meetings that took place. We are particularly pleased that Nigeria demonstrated its commitment in-terms of receiving us even in the wake of Omicron. They were quite determined for this visit to take place even on a scaled down basis but they did not want to dilute the main purpose of the visit,” he said.

Through this visit, the President said the two countries have deepened and strengthened the relationship and in many ways.

“The impact of this state visit has also warmly and wonderfully impressed a number of officials in government as well as a number of Nigerians, they know that we have built solid foundations to be able to address a number of problems that will always arise,” he said.

The President said that South Africa and Nigeria “are two big economies on the continent and there will always be challenges and problems at a people-to-people and business-to-business level, so with this visit we built a solid foundation to be able to address all the challenges that have come our way.”

The President expressed his gratitude to Nigeria for taking the delegation in even with the danger of the Omicron variant.

President Ramaphosa further used the opportunity to urge people to vaccinate, saying that “vaccination against this new variant is the most important weapon that we have”.

African countries stand united

The President said the solidarity expressed by President Buhari and the government of Nigeria has sent the strongest message that African countries are standing united against the imposition of arbitrary and discriminatory restrictions.

Speaking at a joint press briefing with President Buhari, President Ramaphosa expressed his gratitude to the government of Nigeria for receiving the delegation warmly in Abuja amid the discovery of the Omicron variant.

He said it was important to emphasise this in the light of the discovery by South African scientists of the Omicron variant of the coronavirus, and the subsequent imposition of extremely harsh and unfair travel restrictions on flights from and to South Africa, as well as on a number of other African countries.

“The solidarity you expressed says that as African countries we are standing united against the imposition of arbitrary and discriminatory restrictions that are not only unscientific, but counter-productive in the long run,” he said.

The President noted that the leaders of Cote d’Ivoire, as well as of Ghana and Senegal, have also expressed their dissatisfaction with the travel ban against South Africa and its sister countries in Southern Africa.

He said that overcoming the global pandemic, requires that everyone collaborate and work together as a collective.

President Ramaphosa has once again called on the countries who have imposed these travel bans to reverse their decisions.

Source: South African Government News Agency