CHAPTER ONE
- INTRODUCTION
- BACKGROUND INFORMATION
Economic Community of West Africa states (ECOWAS) was founded on 28th of May, 1975. It is a regional organization of fifteen countries which include; Benin, Burkina Faso, Cote d‟ivoire, Gambia. Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Cape Verde, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Togo. The ECOWAS treaty was signed on 28th of May, 1975, when the fifteen countries met in Lagos, Nigeria to sign the treaty. ECOWAS has governing bodies that has changed along the course of the community‟s existence and these bodies include; the Head of State and Government, the Council of Ministers, the Community Parliament, the Economic and Social Council, the Community of Social Justice, the Executive Secretariat, the Fund and Cooperation, Compensation, Development and Specialized Technical Commission. ECOWAS is considered one of the pillars of the African Economic Community; it was founded in order to achieve „collective self-sufficiency‟ for its member states by creating a single large trading bloc through an economic and trading union. (DR A.B Akinyemi et al (1984))
Its mission has been to foster promotion cooperation and economic integration in all fields of economic activity, particularly industry, transport, telecommunications, energy, agriculture, natural resources, commerce, monetary and financial matters, social and cultural issues among the member states.( ibid )
The Nigerian economy has had a truncated history. In the period 1960-1970, the Gross Domestic product recorded 3.1 per cent growth annually (A.H.EKPO and O.J.UMOH: Online Nigeria Community Portal of Nigeria). During the oil boom era, roughly 1970-1978, GDP grew positively by 6.2percent annually, in the period 1988-1997 which constitute the period of
structural adjustment and economic liberalization, the GDP responded to economic adjustment policies and grew at a positive rate of 4.0 per cent (ibid). In years after independence, the period 1980-1988 where industry manufacturing grew negatively 3.2 per cent and 2.9 per cent respectively, Gross Domestic Investment as a percentage of GDP which was 16.3 per cent and
22.8 per cent in the periods 1965-1973 and 1973-1980 respectively, decreased to almost 14 per cent in 1980-1988 and increased to 18.2 per cent in 1991-1998 account balance before official transfers are negative for 1965-1975, 1980-1988 and 1991-1998(ibid). The economy never experienced double digit inflation during the 1960s. By 1976, the inflation rate stood at 23 per cent, it decreased to 11.8 per cent in 1979 and moved to 41 per cent and 72.8 per cent in 1989 and 1995 respectively, by 1998, the inflation rate had however reduced to 9.5 per cent from 29.0 per cent in 1996 (A.H.EKPO and O.J.UMOH: Online Nigeria Community Portal of Nigeria).