Nigeria has expressed readiness to host the African Central Bank according to the vision of the Abuja Treaty.
Nigeria’s president, Bola Ahmed Tinubu made the affirmation while speaking at the 37th Ordinary Session of the Assembly of Heads of State and Government of the African Union (AU) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
Tinubu assured African leaders of Nigeria’s readiness and commitment to working with the African Union Commission and member states to establish the bank by 2028.
According to a statement by his Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Ajuri Ngelale, Tinubu also categorised challenges facing the continent into externally engineered and locally induced.
He affirmed that Africa’s success in conclusively addressing its challenges hinges on the firmness of its resolution, built on a foundation of deep-rooted solidarity if it is to avoid perpetuating existing problems and creating new ones.
“As a continent and as individual nations, we face strong headwinds and difficult hurdles threatening to complicate our mission to bring qualitative democratic governance and economic development to our people. Many of these obstacles, such as climate change and unfair patterns of global trade, are largely not of our making.
“However, some of the pitfalls, including coup-birthed autocracies and the deleterious tinkering with constitutional tenure provisions, are developmental cancers we as Africans are giving to ourselves,” he stated.
Speaking on the military takeovers in the Republics of Guinea, Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger and the exit of three of these nations from ECOWAS, the President said disagreements over the unconstitutional changes of government should not mean a permanent rupture of the abiding lines of regional affinity and cooperation.
“The drive for a peaceful, strong, and united West Africa is bigger than any one person or group of people. The bonds of history, culture, commerce, geography, and brotherhood hold deep meaning for our people. Thus, out of the dust and fog of misunderstanding and acrimony, we must seize the chance to create a new people-centric era of trust and accord,” President Tinubu said.
The Treaty Establishing the African Economic Community, otherwise known as the Abuja Treaty, was adopted on 3 June I991 and entered into force on 12 May 1994. It was aimed at fostering the social, economic and cultural development of the African continent through the integration of the economies of the various countries.
The treaty lays the foundation for the eventual establishment of an African Common Market and, together with the OAU Charter, regulates the work and aims of the OAU.
The treaty provides for the creation of an African Economic Community through a gradual process of co-ordination, harmonization and progressive integration of the activities of existing and future Regional Economic Communities (RECs) in Africa. This will be done in six successive stages over 34 years.