Why African countries need better transport interconnectivity, cooperation, integration – Speaker Abbas

By Christiana Ekpa

The Speaker of the Nigerian House of Representatives, Rt. Hon. Abbas Tajudeen, PhD, has called for better socio-cultural and economic cooperation among African countries.

Speaker Abbas particular called for better transportation system that connects African countries for better integration and cooperation.

The Speaker made the call at the 18th Conference of Speakers and Presiding Officers of the Commonwealth (CSPOC), Africa Region, in Yaoundé, Cameroon, on Wednesday.

“I want to chip in something on what my Namibian colleague experienced concerning our challenges when it comes to transportation in Africa. This is not just peculiar to the East African side, even we in the West African countries where Cameroon is one of the countries, I am sorry to inform you that this is my very first time of visiting Cameroon, even though Nigeria shares a common border with Cameroon.

“Under normal circumstances, it does not take 15 to 20 minutes drive from one part of Nigeria to Cameroon. But because of the issues of logistics that we are facing on air transportation and land as well, you will find out that majority of Cameroon don’t know what is happening in their neighbouring countries and vice versa. How can you foster economic and social cooperation when people – neighbours – don’t even know anything about each other?

“So, we need to really work not only on air; we need to try ways of improving our land transportation like railway connectivity. Take an example when you for to Europe – the Schengen areas, it takes you less than one hour from one country to another. And you will do it so seamlessly without knowing that you have passed a country and you are in the next country,” Abbas said.

The Speaker, while sharing some of the experiences and the actions that the National Assembly of Nigeria had taken towards better African unity, noted that both the Senate and the House had each created a Committee on African Integration and Cooperation “to look at how we can be able to bring Africa.”

Speaker Abbas added; “I am sure that some of the speakers might probably be aware that legislatures from Nigeria have been relating with their colleagues from other African countries on this subject matter. So, I want to urge other legislators in other countries to take this matter very seriously because this is one area where we, as legislators, will be able to make our contributions while waiting for the Executive (arm of the governments) to do their own part.

“We should try establishing, as part of your standing committees, a committee called Committee on African Integration and Cooperation. It is very fundamental if we can have it in all our legislatures, it will go a long way in sharing these kinds of ideas and finding solutions.”

According to the Speaker, another initiative from the Nigerian Parliament is the creation of friendship committees. He noted that the National Assembly in Nigeria, within the last four years, had about 10 friendship committees which are “primarily to take care of issues to do economic and cultural relationships with some countries.”

He also noted that the 10th House of Reps, with him as the Speaker, would create more, stressing that, “This is also in our resolve to ensure that African countries and non-African countries are closer together, so that we can share our common issues and objectives.”

Speaker Abbas urged other parliaments in Africa yo emulate Nigeria’s National Assembly by creating similar committees for the same purposes.

The Speaker added, “Lastly among our initiatives is creating a committee called Committee on Legislative Compliance. This committee is charged primarily with looking at all the treaties that have been entered with our country and making sure that each of everyone of them is followed to the letter. What I have observed in Africa is that we are very good with signing treaties but we are very poor when it comes to implementation.

“Since we have Executives and we know we (Legislatures) have a role to play in what they do, it is to ensure that we have committees that will be interfacing with our Executives, persuading and encouraging them to ensure domesticate what we they have signed as treaties with African countries and other parts of the world.”