VICE President Yemi Osinbajo has given further indication that Nigeria will soon sign on to the African Continental Free Trade Area (ACFTA) as he praised the likely benefits of the agreement on Monday.
Speaking at the 8th Presidential Quarterly Business Forum with focus on the Export Sector and a brief on the ACFTA, in Abuja, he stressed the advantage accruable to the country in the agreement.
Nigeria had been reluctant to sign the agreement even though most African countries have done so.
His remark followed President Muhammadu Buhari signal last week that consultations on the possibility of signing it were almost concluded.
The Vice President said: “With respect to the ACFTA, there is clearly a huge advantage for us no question about it at all. The rest of Africa see the enormous advantage of Nigeria’s participation, everybody is waiting for us naturally and that is because they see a huge market, there are advantages of our being there. But we must ensure we get the best possible terms for Nigerian trade and commerce.
“Our experiences with dumping and other injurious practices make it obvious to us that our market could be a real target, our local manufacturing could become unprofitable, our agricultural advantage could be reversed.
“Consequently, we have embarked on extensive consultations with trade groups, manufacturers and organized labour in all the six geopolitical zones in other to get a clear sense of concerns as we navigate the process of signing the treaty.
“I think a general resolve favours engagement but the concerns remains around improving the domestic environment for greater competitiveness, concerns of the power supply and investment in infrastructure.“
On the checks prescribed by the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN) is advocating for, before its signing, Osinbajo stated: “I think those background checks are important as to what works and what doesn’t work and what is going on with the industry and all that. I think those concerns are very crucial and I think many of them are being done already. But at the same time, we must be careful not to give the impression that these are minimum pre-conditions for engagement with the process because the question, of course, has been asked when will we be ready? What is the opportunity cost of not engaging now? I think these are some of the concerns that we must be fixed.
“The only way to go is that we must fix the gap, we must keep the engine running, there is no time for us to say let’s wait, take the entire time just to prepare. I think this is the time to go ahead and do something about it while we are taking into accounts all the issues that have been raised and making sure that we are negotiating well.”
He said that Nigeria was leading in engaging stakeholders before the signing could be done.
According to him, “for the first time, Nigeria is actually engaged and we are leading the engagement. This is something that has never happened in the past. In the past we found treaties that were negotiated, nobody knew who negotiated them, nobody knew how they were done, nobody knew what was going on.
“I have been involved many years ago as attorney general in the federal ministry of justice, one of the critical things we did then was gathered all our treaties reports from 1990, I actually edited 10 volumes. All those volumes nobody knew who negotiated them, we just simply signed. But for the first time, we have an office that we have trade negotiators and that is how come we are in the forefront of this particular negotiations, we actually went and poached Ambassador Osakwe from the WTO. Because Nigeria is actually positioned today in Africa as the largest economy, we also want to be positioned as the leader in innovation, business, industry and to do so we have to have the right people that are competent, must be ready to work and must also understand this is how the environment work.
“And I think we have a big advantage in having our own negotiators taking the charge here. If we are the ones negotiating the terms are better for us than for us to sit back and watch other people do the negotiations that we may end up signing.”
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Also speaking, the Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment, Okechukwu Enelamah, said the country must be represented at the negotiation table while taking care of the concerns raised by the private sector else Nigeria will be shut out.
He added: “If we are not at the table when the engagement is going on because those at the table are those who are deciding, so if we are not at the table we actually run a risk of being shut out. I have had meetings with some of the lead manufacturers and what we have proposed going forth is that both Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN) and other stakeholders should join our working committee to make sure we engage. But the idea of not signing the agreement actually disadvantages us, it weakens our position. As have been pointed out by the speakers, the agreement is a ticket to play and I mean not buying the ticket to play is suicidal in a market where the consequences will be there.
“So I suggest we do both, we accept to play and also solve these problems and make sure the work goes on. And that we want to do collectively in a partnership. We are going be having another meeting with MAN and other stakeholders who are interested in continuing with us very soon.”
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