ECOWAS members should have one currency - Obasanjo

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has advocated the
need for the Economic Community of West African States
to expedite action on the adoption of a unit of currency
for the sub-region.
He made this known on Monday at his Presidential
Hilltop residence in Abeokuta when the President of the
ECOWAS Commission, Mr. Marcel Allain de-Souza, paid
him a courtesy visit.
He said despite the fact that ECOWAS had agreed on this
no effort had been made to make this become a reality.
He said, “We have decided that our unit of currency
would be Eco. Let us now start using Eco, let Eco
become our unit of currency.
“I will continue to make myself available in the service
of ECOWAS. Wherever you think my services will be
needed, call upon me, I am ready. What is important is
that these communities of 320 million people will be
lifted up. These communities should be marching along.
We should get rid of internal conflicts.”
The former President recalled that 41 years ago when
ECOWAS was established, the expectation of the
founding fathers, including himself, was high.
He, however, lamented that the organisation had not
moved as fast as it should in the area of economic
integration, but rather it had been bogged down by
conflicts within the constituent countries.
He said, “I think we will not be fair to ourselves if we do
not say to ourselves we have not moved as fast and as
far the expectation 41 years ago had been.
“But as you have rightly said, there have been issues
that have come up that were unexpected. I think again
we must tell ourselves the truth that there has not been
enough political will on our part to move that sub-
regional organisation as fast and as far as we should
have done.
“We never expected that internal conflicts will engage
the attention of ECOWAS as much as it has engaged our
attention in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Mali, Guinea-Bissau,
in Cote D’Ivoire just to mention a few.”
Obasanjo explained that many of the conflicts which had
broken out in this region were caused by the leaders not
paying adequate attention to issue of inclusiveness in
the course of administering the affairs of their countries.
“I want to say this that most of these conflicts; most of
these causes of insecurity or breach of security were
because adequate attention had not been paid to what I
will call inclusiveness.
“Inclusiveness in terms of political, economic and social
development of all our countries. Inclusiveness gender
wise, inclusiveness social wise, inclusiveness religious
wise, inclusiveness ethnic wise and we must appeal to
our leaders in our sub-region to take these issues of
inclusion seriously.”
Obasanjo further noted that there should be deeper
economic reform regime within the ECOWAS Commission
which would enable member countries to move beyond
movement of goods and services.
The former President expressed his concern over the
legion of unemployed youths in the sub-region, arguing
that the whole African continent was sitting on a keg of
gun powder for as long as its leaders refused to pay
adequate attention to providing jobs for them.
He was also worried about the food crisis in West Africa,
in which the region was finding it difficult to feed its
people.
He said, “We now have a situation in part of West Africa
where people are now dying of starvation. Is it that we
are not producing enough food? Or if we are producing,
what we produced are evenly? It is shameful for
whatever that has led us to be begging international
communities for supply of food to any part of West
Africa, it is not right.”