Nigeria undoubtedly occupies a central place in the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). Nigeria’s capital houses both the headquarters and the parliament of ECOWAS. This is understandable because over 50% of the ECOWAS population live in Nigeria. Nigeria’s GDP is larger than that of the combined GDP of all the other ECOWAS states put together.
In fact, Nigeria accounts for the lion share of the annual ECOWAS budget. In 16 years, Nigeria has contributed more than $1.177billion to ECOWAS as its community levy, and this is the highest contribution by any member state since inception.
Hon. Awajim Abiante, a Nigerian lawmaker at the ECOWAS Parliament noted that “Nigeria has immensely contributed to the ECOWAS- power supply to member states, medical interventions and peacekeeping efforts in member states including the Gambia, Mali, Sierra Leone, Guinea Bissau, Liberia among others.
“Despite Nigeria’s larger-than-life financial contributions to ECOWAS, the country and its citizens have not benefited immensely.
“There is a need to appraise the benefits and contributions of ECOWAS towards the Socio-economic development of Nigeria and Nigerians in the last ten years,” the lawmaker said at a plenary session at the Nigerian House of Representatives.
The pre-eminence of the Nigerian economy vis-à-vis the other ECOWAS states, and its correspondingly large financial responsibilities (among others), inevitably raises the question of the value of ECOWAS for Nigeria. Many regional integration schemes have been established in Africa in the bid to attain a market no more than half the size of Nigeria. Moreover, Nigeria’s domestic industrial production is still insufficient to accommodate the vast demands of its internal market, how much more to provide for significant exports to neighbouring ECOWAS states.
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