A former President of Nigeria, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, has said that the African Free Continental Trade Area Agreement (AfCTA) will not be hindered by because Nigeria is slow to sign up to the process.
\nHe spoke on Monday in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, during the opening session of the Stakeholders\u2019 Dialogue on Continental Trade and Strengthening the Implementation of the AfCTA.
\nThe dialogue was organised by the African Union Commission and the Coalition for Dialogue on Africa (CoDA).\u00a0 Obasanjo is the Chairman of the Coalition.
\nObasanjo was responding to comments by one of the discussants at the event, on the need for stakeholders to look into the implications of AfCTA without Nigeria, the continent\u2019s biggest economy.
\nNigeria, Benin and Eritrea were the only countries yet to sign the AfCTA agreement.
\nAlready, the Agreement has achieved the number of ratification, 22 countries, needed for its implementation.
\nThe former President wondered why Nigeria which took over the processes leading to the AfCTA agreement from Egypt, suddenly halted signing and was not even participating in the session.
\n“It is nobody\u2019s fault if your country cannot resolve its domestic problem.
\n\u201cIf you (Nigeria) is not signing the agreement, it is unfortunate. AfCTA will go on without Nigeria.
\n\u201cYou will recall that this is the first time, since 1976, that Nigeria is not at the table of a major continental process.
\n\u201cNigeria should settle its problem at home and not bring it to the AU,\u2019\u2019 Obasanjo said.
\nHe also recalled that Nigeria led the way, at ministerial level, with the government ready to be in Kigali, Rwanda, to sign the agreement, before the sudden turnabout.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A former President of Nigeria, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, has said that the African Free Continental Trade Area Agreement (AfCTA) will not be hindered by because Nigeria is slow to sign up to the process. He spoke on Monday in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, during the opening session of the Stakeholders\u2019 Dialogue on Continental Trade and Strengthening […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":10647,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18264","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18264"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18264\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}