Business
‘ECOWAS can’t survive without Nigeria’
The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) says, if Nigeria reduces assistance to it, the community would find it difficult to survive most challenges facing it.
Making the assertion during a visit to President Muhammadu Buhari, the ECOWAS President, Alain de Souza described the meeting as a matter of urgent importance.
He enumerated the issues requiring the country’s support to include: finances, collective security and the Common External Tariffs (CET) programme.
The leadership of the sub-regional body was also eager to firm up the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) with Nigeria, a policy that targets member-countries as an economic bloc.
The economic team had been in the State House, Abuja since Thursday to further highlight the intra-community trade as well as the reforms and adjustments, which are said to be stalled due to reduced financial support by Nigeria in the past years following its recent economic recession.
Read also: CBN intervenes in interbank market to save naira
Emphasizing Nigeria’s unparalleled leadership role in ECOWAS, de Souza recalled the country’s outstanding sacrifices
in the past in trying to ensure greater stability and integration of the region with examples abounding its peacekeeping missions in Sierra Leone and Liberia.
Accompanied by the full compliments of senior officials of the ECOWAS Commission, he had earlier paid a courtesy visit to the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Hajia Khadija Bukar Ibrahim, before proceeding to the
Presidential Villa.
Nigeria alone constitutes about 200 million of the 320 million people in West Africa, a dominant player in the programme of the 13-member economic community.
Earlier, the Nigerian Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Ibrahim had disclosed that Nigeria accords great importance to ECOWAS, stressing that the background and wealth of experience of President de Souza as a banker and finance manager would come handy in resolving some of the old issues on ground before his resumption of office.
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