By Vincent Ikuomola and Tony Akowe, Abuja
HE non-payment of levies is hampering the growth of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), its speaker’s parliament Sidie Mohammed Tunis has said.
Tunis has, therefore, urged member-countries to ensure the payment of their levies as at when due.
He argued that prompt payment will enable the sub-regional body to be able to execute planned programmes within a timeframe.
Tunis spoke on the sideline of the ongoing inaugural session of the 5th Legislature of the ECOWAS Parliament in Niamey, Niger Republic.
Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives Ahmed Idris Wase was reelected as the ECOWAS first Deputy Speaker at the session.
Aklesso Atcholi from Togo was elected as third Deputy Speaker and Adja Pinto from Guinea Bissau was voted as fourth Deputy Speaker.
Tunis, the newly elected Speaker of the ECOWAS Parliament, who is from Sierra Leone, also proposed the establishment of Public Account Committee in the parliament with the core mandate of reviewing audit reports submitted by the commission.
Tunis said PAC shall ensure effective financial management that places greater implementation responsibility with managers and makes them more accountable for their performances.
He, however, explained that the non-payment of such levies had denied defaulting countries like Cape Verde certain privileges they should have enjoyed as member-states.
Tunis added that it would have been easier to deploy professional health workers to any member country to provide assistance where the resources are readily available.
He said emphasis should be on prevention and not just reacting when viruses like Coronavirus strike.
Read Also: ECOWAS seeks proactive approach to Africa’s devt, peace, stability
The speaker also pledged to pay more attention to the media and to make the activities of the parliament more visible and known to citizens of the community.
Statistics on payment of the community levies showed that between 2003 and 2015, Nigeria paid more than $710 million dollars, equivalent to 480 million West Africa Units of Account (UA).
The West Africa UA is the official nominal monetary unit of measure or currency used by ECOWAS to represent the real value.
In the same period, 13 other countries contributed a cumulative amount of $697, 947 million apart from Ghana, which paid $327. 976 million.
The new speaker also promised that the parliament under his leadership would ensure that the community’s budget is dedicated to programmes and projects that would impact positively to citizens at grassroots levels.
“We must pay close attention to the performance aspect of budgeting by demonstrating to stakeholders that ECOWAS resources are being used effectively to achieve results and that these results are beneficial to our citizens.”
He also revealed that the parliament would be sending election monitors to four member-states that will be conducting election this year.
The affected countries are: Guinea, Cote d’ Ivoire, Niger and Ghana.
On the political situation in Togo, he said the ECOWAS Parliament would continue to monitor the election process there.
In the area of security, the new speaker promised to work with the Authority of Heads of State and Government as well as Council of Ministers to ensure that the region was safe, secured and prosperous.
Leave a Reply