AN ASSESSMENT OF THE ACP-EU PARTNERSHIP AGREEMENT ON NIGERIA WITH A FOCUS ON THE LOMÉ CONVENTION AND COTONOU AGREEMENT
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- NGN 3000
Background to the Study
The European Union’s relationship with the African, Caribbean, and Pacific (ACP) countries can be traced back to the treaty of Rome and specifically the Georgetown agreement on the organization of the African, Caribbean, and Pacific groups of states of 1975 (Matteo, 2020). According to Matteo (2020), Africa is a well-known European Union’s trade partner of choice. Therefore, after the African States gained independence, the European Economic Community (EEC) became acquainted with the former colonial states of the continent. The EEC’s first association agreement with African ex-colonies was signed in Yaoundé in 1963 followed by the second Yaoundé Convention of 1969. Underlying the agreements are the components of trade promotion, economic independence, and social development of the State Parties.
The Yaounde Convention was followed by the Lomé Convention in 1975 to establish a new framework for cooperation between the European Economic Community (EEC) and the developing African, Caribbean, and Pacific nations. The preferential access granted to certain products from the African, Caribbean, and Pacific (ACP) to the European Economic Community (EEC) was mainly based on the quotas system. In fact, Nsongura (2004) alluded that nonreciprocal duty-free access to the EU markets and other assistance was granted to ACP countries as part of its broader stipulations. The financial envelope traditionally used for these purposes is the European Development Fund (Nsongura, 2004). The EEC committed 3 billion euros to the development of the ACP countries through the European Unit of Account (EUA). The Lomé Convention was also renewed multiple times in 1980, 1986, 1991, and 1996 (Matteo, 2020).
Given the dynamic nature of human relations and also the tenured nature of the agreements to last for only 20 years, the Lomé Convention was replaced by the Cotonou partnership agreement. Matteo (2020) captured the Cotonou partnership agreement aptly when he argued that the Lomé Convention was modified to pave the way for a more inclusive political, social, and economic cooperation hence, the Cotonou partnership agreement was signed on June 23, 2000, in Cotonou, Republic of Benin. These agreements, notwithstanding, at the core of the African, Caribbean, and Pacific (ACP) countries and the European Union (EU) cooperation is the “objective of reducing and eventually eradicating poverty” among member nations (Article 1 of the Cotonou partnership agreement, 2000). To this end, the developing state of member ACP states are well- acknowledged but with an intendment to seize prevailing economic opportunities to advance the course of development in line with the sustainable development goals.
The imperatives presented by the Lomé and Cotonou agreements further buttress the provisions of section 16 (2) (a) which states inter alia that “the State shall direct its policy towards ensuring the promotion of a planned and balanced economic development”. This stipulation, in fact, underscores the objective of the ACP-EU partnership agreements as established earlier. Indeed, section 16 of the 1999 constitution (as altered) deepened the essence of section 14 (2) (b) which provides that “the security and welfare of the people shall be the primary purpose of government”. Overall, given that the government derives its power and authority from the people to whom sovereignty belongs (section 14 (2) (a)), it is safe to assert that Nigeria’s membership of the ACP-EU is towards the betterment of the lives of the citizens. Nevertheless, the trajectory of this study connotes a specific analysis of the benefits derived from the respective ACP-EU partnership agreements since its inception in 1975. Therefore, the defining element of the study remains the effectiveness of the Lomé Convention and Cotonou partnership agreements in advancing the economic wellbeing of citizens given that the ACP-EU by itself strives to eradicate poverty.
In perspective, the objectives of the ACP-EU as outlined in the Cotonou agreement are geared toward achieving peace and stability, managing migration and mobility, consolidating democracy and good governance, unleashing economic opportunities, reaching human development standards, and addressing climate change among member states. Consequently, this study sought to assess the effects of the ACP-EU’s Lomé Convention and Cotonou Partnership Agreements on Nigeria’s trade performance between 1975 and 2020. Worthy of note also, is that these partnership agreements are within the context of relationships between the listed members of the ACP-EU Partnership as provided in Appendix VI. The list of ACP-EU members provided in Appendix VI, gives an overview of the membership of the African, Caribbean, and Pacific- European Union (ACP-EU) partnership thus, providing insight into multilateral relationships along the lines of established national goals or pursuits. Based on this, Nigeria pursues its national agenda with member states.
Statement of the Problem
Like every international organization, the African, Caribbean, and Pacific-European Union (ACP-EU) partnership is the product of a convention or protocol the first being the Yaounde Convention of 1969. Following international law, this convention is of a multilateral dimension given the composition of its signatories. In any case, parties to an international protocol or convention enter into it because of pecuniary benefits inherent in them. Thus, Nigeria participates in the ACP-EU relations to serve her interest. In fact, Nigeria’s participation is in sync with her foreign policy objectives expressed in Section 19 of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (as altered). A portion of this section of the constitution provides among other things that the country’s foreign policy will be driven towards “the promotion and protection of National interest as well as the promotion of Africa integration and support for African unity”. According to Ukaoha (2018), the ACP-EU relations support the stipulations of the Abuja treaty of 1991 which is on the strengthening of Africa’s integration through the establishment of a free trade area and common market with the gradual removal of obstacles to the free movement of persons, goods and services, etc. However, the recent operational document of the ACP-EU being the Cotonou partnership agreement deviates from the non-reciprocal duty-free access to EU markets by ACP nations' disposition of the former agreement (Lomé convention) to the extent that the latter introduces a novel idea known as the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs). In context, while the spirit of the non-reciprocal trade gives preferences to exports from a group of less developed or emerging countries to a single country with a larger market, EPAs, on the other hand, are conceived as an agreement between two Free Trade Areas or two Customs Unions where most tariffs are eliminated between the two. The EPAs was also introduced because of the need to transform the trade regime to a WTO compliant agreement.
Nevertheless, it must be stated that the adoption of the Cotonou agreement follows the stipulation of the ACP-EU partnership which provides for the tenureship of its partnership agreements to last for twenty (20) years. Following, the disposition of the trade components of the various instruments of the ACP-EU relations, a question, therefore, should be asked on which of the agreements served Nigeria’s trade interest the most? It must be stated, however, that while scholars attributed the low trade performance of the ACP bloc during the Lomé convention to the uncompetitive nature of their exports, the lack of diversification, among others (Roy, 2016), the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA), which was the hallmark of the Cotonou partnership agreement has been criticized for its non-preferential disposition gives EU products an edge over ACP ones. Against this backdrop, this study evaluated Nigeria’s trade performance between 1975 and 2020 i.e., the eras of the Lomé Convention and the Cotonou partnership agreement.
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