As the Nigerian delegation led by Abubakar Abdulsalam and the Sultan of Sokoto arrives in Niamey for talks, I hope they have an action plan that looks something like this

[1] Learning from the European Union (EU), Africa as a continent needs to see how the creation of the community has delivered peace, prosperity, economic growth and technological advancement. Europe can only compete with the US and China if it is united. Had Africa developed organically, we would not have had this current large number of nation states

[2] Many African nations are unviable and not sustainable. Nigeria has to address this matter going into the 22nd century. We are the continent’s giant and cannot shirk our responsibilities. Africa does not need more than 12 nation states

[3] Of the 42 landlocked countries in the world, 16 are in Africa. This represents about a third of the total and for me is totally unacceptable. Nigeria’s foreign policy has to be geared towards altering this

[4] We need to find a way to amalgamate our nation states peacefully and open up Africa to unprecedented economic growth

[5] Aliko Dangote was recently talking about the difficulties he always faced when negotiating with so many African nations. If we significantly reduced the number of countries, we would remove a lot of impediments to growth and then on the basis of that create a genuine free trade area and common market of 12 sovereign nations

[6] With so many weak and small nations, world powers are having a field day in Africa. There are only few African nations that can for instance refuse to accept US rice, Chinese cement or French wine. Nigeria needs sort this out, so please address the matter President Bola Tinubu

[7] President Tinubu needs to exploit this Niger Republic crisis and establish a West African Customs Service that will check goods coming into our main ports like Dakar, Abidjan, Tema, Lome, Cotonou and Apapa. Tag all containers that arrive at our ports so we know which ones are destined for the Nigerian market. As things stand, over 70% of the goods that come into West Africa are ultimately destined for Nigeria

[8] The Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas), needs to reach an agreement with the likes of China, India, Pakistan and Thailand that have made West Africa their dumping ground. Maybe we should insist that all their shipments go to one port, so we can monitor them from there. Personally, I would dredge say Calabar and make it the dedicated Asian port. All Asian goods coming into the West African region should go there and from Calabar be distributed to their destined markets

[9] Ecowas only has a combined GDP of $675bn compared with India’s $2.5trn. We should demand trade concessions until we grow the Ecowas economy to at least $1trn. For instance, we should ask for the introduction of WTO trade laws that compel any country exporting goods in excess of $1m into any region to open a manufacturing facility there

[10] All automobile manufacturers should be banned from shipping finished cars into the Ecowas market. If they want to sell their cars there, then they should open local assembly plants. If you ask me, Nigeria and Benin Republic should commence merger talks immediately with a view to amalgamating both nations by 2025 at the latest