Government commits to diligent, beneficial treaties

• Raises impact, readiness assessment panel
Nigeria would, henceforth, not sign treaties without a corresponding assessment of their impact on the lives of the citizens, President Muhammadu Buhari has disclosed.

He made the pledge yesterday in Abuja while inaugurating the Okechukwu Enelamah-led Committee for Impact and Readiness Assessment of the African Continental Free Trade Area that also has his Chief of Staff, Abba Kyari, as co-chair.

The president noted that his administration was breaking away from the old practice where treaties were signed without reviewing the positive gains for the nation.

“We are determined to break away from the past practice of committing Nigeria to treaties without a definite implementation plan to actualise the expected benefit while mitigating the risks. We cannot go back to the days of signing agreements without understanding and planning for the consequences of such actions and our country being the worse for it,” he stated.

Buhari added: “Few months ago, I directed a nationwide stakeholders’ engagement to understand the true impact of this agreement on Nigeria and Nigerians, considering the existing domestic and regional policies as it relates to trade.

“From the consultation, the key issues raised by stakeholders were abuse of rules of origin, smuggling arising from difficulties in border controls, unqualified impact of legacy preferential trade agreements, low capacity and capability of local businesses to conduct international trade, costly finance, insufficient energy and transport logistics infrastructure but our Economic Recovery and Growth Plan is addressing these issues.”