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Agbakoba disagrees with Okonjo on border reopening

Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) Olisa Agbakoba has urged the federal government to disregard the “liberal and open borders” ideas posited by Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, director-General of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) during her recent visit.

According to Agbakoba, Nigeria must, instead, adopt a trade policy that protects its ailing economy.

In a press statement made available to Ripples Nigeria on Saturday evening, Agbakoba noted that while he has huge respect for the DG of WTO, her advise on reopening of the border are ill-timed as it will make the country more import dependent.

His statement reads, “Nigeria has no current Trade policy and Dr Okonjo Iweala seems to promote liberal and open borders. The problem is that we will remain consumers of imported products and cannot develop our economy to boost production and give jobs to the over 25 million unemployed.

“While we must balance import policy with local production policy, we must heed the warning of wise economists that we cannot develop unless our trade policy is designed to promote local industries.

I hesitate to compliment Trump’s America First trade policy but Trump understood the need to protect the US by discouraging over dependence on imports.

“Nigeria produces crude but imports petrol. We produce cocoa but import cocoa powder. We have Tin, Gold and Iron but import the finished products In billions!

“We closed our Benin border to imports and made 12 billion a day internally. It was a strong trade policy to produce rice locally that has made us near self sufficient.

“Now, we are growing tomato, corn, beans, etc because we are discouraging imports.

“Nigerians be wise. We must support MADE IN NIGERIA. I propose we adopt a new trade policy with strong trade laws to protect our ailing economy. Nigeria will be transformed by a Made in Nigeria Trade Policy.”

A former President of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Dr. Olisa Agbakoba (SAN), has called for the devolution of powers to states in order to make them independent and stronger.

He made this known in a letter written to the Senate and addressed to the President of the Senate, Dr. Ahmad Lawan on Wednesday.

Agbakoba noted that the country must also be immediately restructured in order to solve the various challenges facing the country. The Senior Advocate added that the country must choose its own model of federalism considering its peculiarities.

The lawyer, however, demanded a review of the exclusive and concurrent lists, so as to give more powers to the states. He also asked the federal government to rename both lists as the federal legislative list and state legislative list.

He said: “The constitution has two legislative lists namely, exclusive and concurrent. These lists have 98 items of power. The federal government exercises exclusive power over 68 items on the exclusive list. The states in concurrence with the federal government, exercise power over 30 items on the concurrent list.

“But the states may only exercise power on the concurrent list, only if the federal government has not already ‘covered the field’ on any of the 30 items. In effect, state governments really have no power.”

Agbakoba disclosed that a committee should be set up to review the 98 items on the exclusive list and assign what is best to the federal government and what is best to the states.

He noted that the simple process of devolved powers can be by virtue of an enactment styled, and constitution alteration (devolution of powers) bill.