Professor Bolaji Akinyemi, the former Nigerian Minister for Foreign Affairs, has said that there is a need for the African Union to be restructured so as to bring about a united front and a strong representation of the continent to the rest of the world.
In an interview with ARISE NEWS on Monday, Prof. Akinyemi, while speaking on the happenings of the African Union’s 5th Mid-Year coordination meeting, said that the AU could not continue to operate with the same principles as when it first began. He said, “How is, not only Africa, but the world, going to pay attention to the African Union if you still continue to operate the syndrome that you were operating in 1960 when all African countries, by and large, came onto the scene. The world has moved on. The global affairs has moved on since then.”
Shedding more light on the statement made above, Akinyemi said, “The African Union, on the back of the Organization of African Unity, is doing this thing of one African country is equal to another African country and what have you. And 60% of them don’t pay their dues, but when it comes to the time for election, oh well, it is the turn of Comoros, it is the turn of countries that have no gravitas on the international seat.”
The former minister then went on to explain that it was not an issue of letting each country have their turn in the leadership of the AU, but that the person who represented the union in the global scene is a person who is from a country that is already fully in the global scene, so that the union can be taken seriously.
Akinyemi explained this further, saying, “There is an urgent need for the internal restructuring of AU itself. You cannot have multiplicity of commissions just in order to ensure that every African country or every region in Africa, whether they paid their dues or not, has a commission to head.
“You’ve got to revisit the fundamentals of the African Union, and you’ve got to have somebody to press this just as Gaddafi pressed the transmutation of the Organization of African Unity to the African Union. If he hadn’t pressed it, that will not have taken place.”
He then commended President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s conduct in the conference saying, “I was impressed by the takeaway points that Tinubu made at this conference. His reference to the fact that Africa has fo be proactive if it wants to be taken seriously. It has to identify the issue that it is going to pursue on the global scene.
“His own rejection of the scramble for Africa, that Africa hasn’t forgotten what he suffered under colonialism, and that he, personally, is committed to identifying the agenda of the African Union in terms of the fight for democracy, in the fight against coups, and in the fight against terrorism.”
Ozioma Samuel-Ugwuezi
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