President Muhammadu Buhari says
Nigeria is too big and too diverse to blindly sign agreements without
understanding the consequences of such actions.
The president said this when he
received representatives of the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI),
led by its president, Babatunde Ruwase, at the presidential villa, Abuja, on
Friday.
Buhari used the occasion of his
audience with members of the LCCI to explain his decision to inaugurate a
presidential committee to assess the potential costs and impact of the
agreement establishing the African Continental Free Trade Area for Nigeria
(AfCTA).
Nigeria was absent in March as
leaders from 44 African countries signed the agreement to form a $2.5 trillion
continental free-trade zone.
The free-trade zone is the
largest in the world since the creation of the World Trade Organisation in
1995.
But Buhari said Nigeria is still
assessing the impact of this agreement on its backward integration and import
substitution policies.
“Specifically, the provisions on
rules of origin and trans shipment were matters of concern to us,” he said.
“Already, some of the treaties we
are party to have been significantly abused, resulting in massive smuggling
which has crippled many of our local industries and destroyed millions of jobs.
“To avoid these past mistakes, we
conducted vast consultations across the country in which the LCCI participated.
The responses have been mixed.’’
Former President Olusegun
Obasanjo had said Buhari’s hands were too weak to sign the AfCTA.
He made the statement while
speaking at the Babacar Ndiaye lecture series in Bali, Indonesia, two weeks
ago.
Taunting Buhari, Obasanjo had
said he hoped Nigeria would soon have a president who will sign the agreement.
“Africa cannot overcome fears of
trade wars till it achieves 50 percent intra-Africa trade,” he had said.
“We now have the continental free
trade agreement which is a good idea and I can assure that Nigeria will soon
sign. Hopefully, we will soon have a president who will be able to sign because
the president that is there now, his hands are too weak to sign.”
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