ECOWAS to pay G'Bissau troops, shifts single currency date
From Madu Onuorah and Oghogho Obayuwana, Abuja
LEADERS of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) at the 36th summit of the Authority of Heads of Government Meeting in Abuja yesterday took decisive actions on the political crisis in Guinea-Bissau and the proposes adoption of a single currency by some member-states.
ECOWAS Chairman and President of Nigeria, Umaru Musa Yar'Adua, called for the accelerated implementation of the integration policies of the body, pledged its commitment to the success of the upcoming June 28 election in Guinea-Bissau.
Towards this, he said, the bloc would effect immediate payment of three months' salary arrears of the country's Armed Forces.
Also at the 9th meeting of the Authority of Heads of State and Government of the West African Monetary Zone (WAMZ), the members resolved to extend the take-off date of ECO, the region's single currency, from January 2010 to June 2014.
The leaders also agreed to provide vehicles and communication equipment to facilitate a hitch-free electoral process in Guinea- Bissau.
Yar'Adua told the audience at the Congress Hall of Transcorp Hilton, Abuja, that "it is sad to note that 30 years after the signing of the Protocol on Free Movement of Goods and Services, we are yet to significantly remove the bottlenecks at our borders, which continue to encumber effective economic integration. The reality of the global economic situation makes it critical for us to recommit to investing the relevant protocols with the requisite political will.
"Under my chairmanship, the focus will remain on the imperatives of socio-political and economic stability and meaningful integration. In the circumstance, we must evaluate the current structure of ECOWAS Commission in our overall desire to have a commission that is compact, effective, efficient and focused on actualising the vision of its founding fathers for a peaceful and economically-prosperous region."
Noting that ECOWAS has set up two committees on the twin issues of energy and infrastructure, Yar'Adua said the commission would soon begin to mobilise experts on "feasibility studies that meet international best standards" to enable ECOWAS access the $100 billion the G-20 pledged for infrastructural development in emerging and developing countries.
The President said that the ECOWAS efforts towards peaceful resolution of crisis in the sub-region has yielded dividends in the elections scheduled to hold in Guinea-Bissau on June 28 and in Guinea and Cote d'Ivoire later this year.
He said: "We are committed to ensuring the success of the upcoming election in Guinea-Bissau. To this end, we have not only decided to provide the gap in funding for the security needs for the election, but we have also decided to effect the payment of three months' salary arrears for the Armed Forces of Guinea-Bissau. In addition, we are also providing vehicles and communication equipment to facilitate a hitch-free electoral process."
President of ECOWAS Commission, Dr. Mohammed Ibn Chambas, urged the leaders to ensure that those behind the assassination of President Nino Vieira of Guinea-Bissau were prosecuted to serve as a deterrent to others.
He said: "The cruelty of his death must make our community reject violence and impunity. And this is why ECOWAS in collaboration with the international community is determined to demand full investigations into the circumstances surrounding his death as well as that of the former Chief of Army Staff and unfortunately again, those of a presidential candidate and minister of interior along with a former minister of defence and his two aides so that such tragic events do not re-occur in our region and such acts do not go unpunished in our sub-region."
Chambas said that without the strengthening of the regional integration process, confronting the global economic meltdown would be impossible for any member-state.
Besides Nigeria, the Presidents and Heads of Governments of Togo, Mali, Liberia, Burkina Faso, Senegal, Cote d'Ivoire, Benin Republic are attending the summit while Niger, Sierra Leone, Cape Verde and Guinea sent their Vice Presidents.
In an 18-point statement issued at the end of its meeting at the Transcorp Hilton, Abuja, WAMZ said the initial deadline of December 31, 2009 for the use of the single currency and monetary union was no longer feasible.
The policy was incorporated into the "Decisions Relating to the Extension of the Transition Period for the Establishment of the West African Central Bank and matters connected therewith."
The summit, which was also presided over by Yar'Adua, opted to launch the WAMZ Monitory Union on or before January 2015.
It also approved the adoption of an Action Plan in the state of preparedness report to be implemented by member-states between 2009 and 2015 to achieve convergence as well as structural and institutional benchmarks under the Banjul Action Plan.
Other decisions taken by the leaders included the extension of the mandate of West African Monetary Institution (WAMI) from 2010 to 2015, the adoption of a schedule of payments of contributions to the capital of the West African Central Bank (WACB) and the stabilisation and cooperation fund by member states; the need for WAMI to design a comprehensive strategy for sensitisation on WAMZ programme for consideration by the Convergence Council.
Members, who attended the WAMZ meeting besides Yar'Adua were the President of Ghana, John Evans Atta Mills, President of Sierra Leone; Ernest Bai Koroma, Vice President of The Gambia, Dr. Isatou Njie-Saidy and the Ambassador of the Republic of Guinea to Nigeria, Dr. Cheick Abdoul Camara.
The Secretary-General of the United Nations (UN), Mr. Ban Ki-Moon, yesterday expressed concern over the increasing wave of instability in West Africa. The global body pledged to mobilise resources to discourage the trend.
Ban stated this at the ECOWAS mid-year summit in Abuja.
Through his Special Representative for West Africa, Said Djinnit, Ban said the UN is intensifying measures to support the summit's agenda on food security, climate change and trans-border trade.
He said the increasing number of flash-points (Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Mauritania, tension building up in Niger) in West Africa, capped by the assassination of Vieira had reached a point where it could no longer be ignored or left at the door-steps of the regional leaders.
"These recent developments are of great concern to the UN. The resolve is for all of us to see how the UN is going to mobilise and discourage this trend of instability in the sub-region," he said.
The message of the world's chief civil servant is coming barely a week after the UN Under-Secretary-General (USG) for political affairs, Lynn Pascoe, on a visit to Nigeria, disclosed that the global body would help in countering threats to security in West Africa.
This year's summit has a special ECOWAS-Spain parley, which will be attended by the country's Prime Minister, Mr. Jose Zapatero,
Chambas said the time had come when ECOWAS must seek only mutually beneficial partnership with others (the European Union) "in order to take maximum advantage of the opportunities of globalisation."
According to him, the essential and vital factor to encourage investments in West Africa is political stability as "no investor will come to a country or an area engulfed in political crisis or conflicts."
