Nigeria’s Relations with China in the Twenty-First Century: Trade, Aid, and Strategic Interests

This study examines the development and dynamics of Nigeria-China relations in the twenty-first century, with particular focus on bilateral trade flows, Chinese development financing, and the strategic interests driving Chinese engagement with Nigeria. China has emerged as Nigeria's largest trading partner and a major source of infrastructure financing, fundamentally altering the traditional architecture of Nigeria's external economic relations. Using a descriptive analytical design, the study reviews bilateral trade data from the National Bureau of Statistics, loan agreement documents, and China-Africa policy framework documents, supplemented by secondary academic literature published between 2020 and 2024. The Dependency Theory in its neo-colonial variant and the South-South Cooperation Framework provide the theoretical lenses. Findings indicate that while Chinese-financed infrastructure projects including the Abuja to Kaduna railway have delivered tangible connectivity benefits, concerns persist about the debt sustainability of Chinese loan terms and the limited local content requirements attached to Chinese construction contracts. The dominance of Chinese manufactured goods in Nigerian markets has also displaced domestic manufacturing in sectors including textiles and plastics. The study recommends renegotiation of loan terms to improve transparency and mandatory local content provisions. Keywords: Nigeria-China relations, infrastructure financing, trade, dependency, South-South cooperation.