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Presidency scraps
Lagos-Seme check points
By Tony
Eluemunor
and Onyekachi Eze,
Abuja
President Olusegun Obasanjo
has directed that all police check points between Lagos and Seme on the
Republic of Benin border, except one, should be dismantled immediately.
He gave the order last week in
Abuja in a message he sent to all the security agencies at a meeting they
held with the Ministry of Cooperation and Integration in Africa.
The ministry invited them to
discuss how they could help remove the obstacle the multiple check points
pose to the free movement of goods and persons, against the protocol of
the Economic Community of West African States
(ECOWAS).
The ministry�s Permanent
Secretary, Etim Amba, confirmed the meeting, where he said police
representatives admitted that most of the check points that litter the
route are illegal.
The ministry told the agencies
the damage the check points have done to the actualisation of the ECOWAS
dream and the overriding need to obey the President�s order for them to be
removed.
Meanwhile, Central Bank
governors from the 16-member ECOWAS will arrive Abuja on Wednesday to
finalise discussions for the smooth take off of ECOWAS second monetary
zone, The Eco, expected to come on stream next July.
The Eco, which will replace
national currencies, will be legal tender alongside the CFA (used in
Francophone ECOWAS countries) for a period before a merger to create a
single currency for the whole region.
The bank chiefs will assess
the performance of each member country in the last quarter of 2004 and
project into the future. They will also attempt a statistical
harmonisation and database development as well as review the study on
payment system development and the statute of the West African Financial
Supervisory Authority.
Meetings of the technical
committee, the Committee of Governors of Central Banks and the Convergence
Council � comprising finance ministers and Central Bank governors � may
precede the summit, which will further prepare the ground for the
implementation of the policy.
Introduction of a common
currency for the five English-speaking ECOWAS countries is hinged on
compliance with the primary and secondary convergence criteria, a set of
macro-economic policies developed by the Accra-based West African Monetary
Institute (WAMI), the interim institution to prepare the establishment of
a common Central Bank.
The five Anglophone countries
� The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Nigeria and Sierra Leone � agreed in April
2000 to operate a second currency from July 2005 under the ECOWAS monetary
cooperation programme for the creation of a single currency for the entire
region.
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