President Bola Tinubu has declared that Nigeria remains open to dialogue with Mali, Guinea, Burkina Faso, and Niger Republic, despite recent coups in the four countries and and their withdrawal from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).
Tinubu made this declaration while addressing African leaders on Saturday at the 37th Ordinary Session of the Assembly of Heads of State and Government of the African Union (AU) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
He stressed that the disagreements over the unconstitutional changes of government in the countries should not mean a permanent rupture of the abiding lines of regional affinity and cooperation.
The President said his administration would engage the Africa Union Commission in collaboration with member states to ensure that the African Central Bank takes off as scheduled in 2028.
He also disclosed Nigeria’s readiness to host the bank in line with the vision of the Abuja Treaty.
Tinubu said, “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.”
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