The Nigerian President along with other ECOWAS leaders will on Wednesday in Lagos, celebrate ECOWAS golden Jubilee.
The ECOWAS golden jubilee was flagged off in Accra last month.
The Lagos events will include re-enacting the 1975 declaration at the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs in Victoria Island.
At the Eko Hotels and Suites event, President Tinubu, the Chairman of ECOWAS, will highlight the economic bloc’s milestones.
The Chairman of the NIIA and former Minister of External Affairs, Prof. Bolaji Akinyemi, will review the bloc’s 50-year journey, which panelists at the NIIA will later analyse.
The Director-General of NIIA, says the NIIA is involved in ECOWAS at fifty because the treaty establishing ECOWAS was signed in Lagos.
“He said that NIIA’s hosting of the event is a symbolic re-enactment of that fact, and the centrality of the NIIA to the overall establishment of ECOWAS.”
The only surviving Head of State who signed the ECOWAS declaration, Gen. Yakubu Gowon, will participate in all the ceremonies and deliver a speech at the Eko Hotels.
Dr Omar Touray, President of the ECOWAS Commission, will deliver the welcome address.
Speaking with TurfNews, Prof Osaghae describes the celebration as a a celebration of resilience.
Celebrating ECOWAS Golden Jubilee Achievements
He said that “ECOWAS has since become a model for integration in Africa. ECOWAS has gone beyond the confines of just economic integration to dealing with like political stability, issues of migration, issues of good governance and democracy and so on.” He said.
According to the NIIA boss, “ECOWAS is a prime example of the kind of thing that countries in the global south especially in Africa can do for themselves.”
Citing example, he said ECOWAS had the initiative to get into Liberia, into Sierra-Leone at a time when the world was looking the other way on the crises in those countries.
He said ECOWAS has also led the way for the protocol of free movement of persons and goods and services, as well as the protocol of good governance and constitutional government.
“So ECOWAS has led the way in all of these areas and has now established itself as a very good model of integration in Africa”. Prof. Osaghae stated.
“ECOWAS has had its challenges, including the most recent challenges that led to the exit of 3 of the members, But ECOWAS has had those challenges across times since 1975 and has survived”
Reasons To Support ECOWAS
According to Professor Osaghae, those things crystallize in the course of time. He said the golden Jubilee celebration is a time “to remind us that ECOWAS is worthy of every support, not only by West Africans and Nigerians, but by the global community because of what ECOWAS stands for.”
“ECOWAS is a stabilizing force, ECOWAS is an economic power house, ECOWAS is an integrating force. The more integrated people get, the greater the capacities they have to develop”. He declared.
