As at the time I’m publishing this, it’s Nigeria’s 65th birthday. It is also our independence day, but very few people are actually saying “Happy independence day!”. The silent reality pervades the atmosphere, and although no one is saying it, everyone knows. We’re not independent. What everyone is also quietly trying not to pay attention to is that we have a new master now, and they’re ruling from the east. When Western creditors grew weary of Nigeria’s constant defaults, China stepped forward with a smile and a cheque book. To many, it looked like friendship — Beijing promised railways, power plants, and airports. Unlike the IMF, China didn’t lecture about corruption or governance. But the price of this generosity was steep: contracts tilted in China’s favor, debts denominated in dollars, and sovereignty traded piece by piece.

The Entry: Railways and Roads for Credit

China’s first serious footprint came through the China Exim Bank in the early 2000s. Deals were simple on paper: we’ll give you money to build infrastructure, but you must hire Chinese contractors, import Chinese equipment, and let Chinese workers handle the projects. The Abuja–Kaduna railway (about $500 million) became the poster child. The Lagos–Ibadan standard gauge line, worth over $1.5 billion, followed. Roads, airport terminals, and hydropower plants tied Nigeria deeper into Chinese credit lines. By 2023, Nigeria owed around $5 billion to China, making Beijing its single largest bilateral creditor. That number sounds small compared to Western debt, but the conditions gave China outsized leverage.

The Hidden Clauses: Sovereignty on Paper

The loans came with fine print that told the real story. Several agreements included waiver clauses, pledging Nigerian assets as collateral if debts went unpaid. In 2020, a leaked House of Representatives probe revealed that some Chinese contracts even waived Nigeria’s right to immunity over certain assets. Abuja downplayed the revelations, but the meaning was plain: a foreign power could one day seize national property, just as colonizers once had. The warning signs multiplied. When lithium — the “new oil” of the green economy — was discovered in Katsina State, it was almost immediately handed to a Chinese company. Just like the railways, just like the loans, even Nigeria’s entry into the energy future was placed in Beijing’s hands. Piece by piece, the outlines of a new dependency emerged — a dependency that looked eerily like the old colonial order, only with Beijing instead of London at the center.

Soft Power, Hard Grip

China’s strategy went far beyond loans. It exported its culture and technology as part of the package. Confucius Institutes embedded Chinese language and culture in Nigerian universities. Telecom giants Huawei and ZTE built the backbone of Nigeria’s communications, even as quiet worries about surveillance were brushed aside. Meanwhile, cheap Chinese goods flooded markets, undercutting local producers and hollowing out what was left of Nigeria’s manufacturing base. Where Britain had once ruled through trade and administration, China now exercised power through debt, technology, and culture.

Why China Was Different

Unlike the IMF or the Paris Club, China never dressed its demands in the language of “reform” or “good governance.” That made Beijing attractive to Nigerian leaders, who preferred new roads to lectures about corruption. But the outcome was no different: dependency. Projects Nigeria could not finance on its own were built with Chinese money, with repayment terms stretching far into the future. The pattern was unmistakable. In the 1960s, Nigeria had one master — Britain. In the 1980s, it acquired several more — the IMF, World Bank, and Paris Club. By the 2000s, another had joined the circle: China. Independence had become a mosaic of servitude, with Abuja answering not only to London or Washington, but now also to Beijing.

Perhaps the clearest sign of how deeply China had woven itself into Nigeria’s fabric came in 2019, when the government announced that Mandarin would be added to the secondary school curriculum. It was framed as a step toward global competitiveness, but the symbolism was striking. A nation that once fought to replace colonial syllabi with African-centered education was now telling its children that fluency in the language of a creditor mattered as much as French or Arabic. Confucius Institutes in universities had already tilled the soil; secondary schools marked the harvest. This was not cultural exchange — it was cultural reorientation. Where Britain had spread English through colonial rule, China is now trying to spread Mandarin through debt diplomacy and strategic generosity. The lesson was clear: in the Nigeria of tomorrow, to move upward, you would need to speak the master’s language — literally.

Nigeria’s story since independence has been one of freedom deferred. The Union Jack came down in 1960, but the structures of dependency never left — first through British influence, then through the IMF and World Bank, and now through China’s deep reach into infrastructure, trade, and even classrooms. Each wave promised renewal yet left the country more entangled in obligations to outsiders, its economy shaped by loans, its policies by creditors, and its culture by foreign powers. What emerges is not the picture of a sovereign nation charting its own path, but of a people repeatedly asked to bear the cost of deals struck in their name. To see China’s rise in Nigeria only as partnership is to miss the deeper continuity: the old colonial order never truly ended — it merely changed its accent.

As at the time I’m publishing this, it’s Nigeria’s 65th birthday. It is also our independence day, but very few people are actually saying “Happy independence day!”. The silent reality pervades the atmosphere, and although no one is saying it, everyone knows. We’re not independent. What everyone is also quietly trying not to pay attention to is that we have a new master now, and they’re ruling from the east. When Western creditors grew weary of Nigeria’s constant defaults, China stepped forward with a smile and a cheque book. To many, it looked like friendship — Beijing promised railways, power plants, and airports. Unlike the IMF, China didn’t lecture about corruption or governance. But the price of this generosity was steep: contracts tilted in China’s favor, debts denominated in dollars, and sovereignty traded piece by piece.

The Entry: Railways and Roads for Credit

China’s first serious footprint came through the China Exim Bank in the early 2000s. Deals were simple on paper: we’ll give you money to build infrastructure, but you must hire Chinese contractors, import Chinese equipment, and let Chinese workers handle the projects. The Abuja–Kaduna railway (about $500 million) became the poster child. The Lagos–Ibadan standard gauge line, worth over $1.5 billion, followed. Roads, airport terminals, and hydropower plants tied Nigeria deeper into Chinese credit lines. By 2023, Nigeria owed around $5 billion to China, making Beijing its single largest bilateral creditor. That number sounds small compared to Western debt, but the conditions gave China outsized leverage.

The Hidden Clauses: Sovereignty on Paper

The loans came with fine print that told the real story. Several agreements included waiver clauses, pledging Nigerian assets as collateral if debts went unpaid. In 2020, a leaked House of Representatives probe revealed that some Chinese contracts even waived Nigeria’s right to immunity over certain assets. Abuja downplayed the revelations, but the meaning was plain: a foreign power could one day seize national property, just as colonizers once had. The warning signs multiplied. When lithium — the “new oil” of the green economy — was discovered in Katsina State, it was almost immediately handed to a Chinese company. Just like the railways, just like the loans, even Nigeria’s entry into the energy future was placed in Beijing’s hands. Piece by piece, the outlines of a new dependency emerged — a dependency that looked eerily like the old colonial order, only with Beijing instead of London at the center.

Soft Power, Hard Grip

China’s strategy went far beyond loans. It exported its culture and technology as part of the package. Confucius Institutes embedded Chinese language and culture in Nigerian universities. Telecom giants Huawei and ZTE built the backbone of Nigeria’s communications, even as quiet worries about surveillance were brushed aside. Meanwhile, cheap Chinese goods flooded markets, undercutting local producers and hollowing out what was left of Nigeria’s manufacturing base. Where Britain had once ruled through trade and administration, China now exercised power through debt, technology, and culture.

Why China Was Different

Unlike the IMF or the Paris Club, China never dressed its demands in the language of “reform” or “good governance.” That made Beijing attractive to Nigerian leaders, who preferred new roads to lectures about corruption. But the outcome was no different: dependency. Projects Nigeria could not finance on its own were built with Chinese money, with repayment terms stretching far into the future. The pattern was unmistakable. In the 1960s, Nigeria had one master — Britain. In the 1980s, it acquired several more — the IMF, World Bank, and Paris Club. By the 2000s, another had joined the circle: China. Independence had become a mosaic of servitude, with Abuja answering not only to London or Washington, but now also to Beijing.

Perhaps the clearest sign of how deeply China had woven itself into Nigeria’s fabric came in 2019, when the government announced that Mandarin would be added to the secondary school curriculum. It was framed as a step toward global competitiveness, but the symbolism was striking. A nation that once fought to replace colonial syllabi with African-centered education was now telling its children that fluency in the language of a creditor mattered as much as French or Arabic. Confucius Institutes in universities had already tilled the soil; secondary schools marked the harvest. This was not cultural exchange — it was cultural reorientation. Where Britain had spread English through colonial rule, China is now trying to spread Mandarin through debt diplomacy and strategic generosity. The lesson was clear: in the Nigeria of tomorrow, to move upward, you would need to speak the master’s language — literally.

Nigeria’s story since independence has been one of freedom deferred. The Union Jack came down in 1960, but the structures of dependency never left — first through British influence, then through the IMF and World Bank, and now through China’s deep reach into infrastructure, trade, and even classrooms. Each wave promised renewal yet left the country more entangled in obligations to outsiders, its economy shaped by loans, its policies by creditors, and its culture by foreign powers. What emerges is not the picture of a sovereign nation charting its own path, but of a people repeatedly asked to bear the cost of deals struck in their name. To see China’s rise in Nigeria only as partnership is to miss the deeper continuity: the old colonial order never truly ended — it merely changed its accent.