NIGERIA’S President Olusegun Obasanjo should press visiting Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori to write off Nigeria’s debts and urge investment, a leading newspaper said. “Rather than the fragmented grants given to Nigeria from time to time, Nigeria’s debts should be written off in order to give Nigeria an economic breathing space,” the newspaper This Day said in an editorial welcoming the first ever visit to the country by a Japanese prime minister. The paper estimated Nigeria’s debt to be $1.4bn as at June 1996. Above all, Japan had lessons to give to a country that remains among the world’s poorest despite abundant oil and gas and other natural riches, This Day said. – AFP