Author: Kwaku GhanaMPs

The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Parliament is to issue a statement on the attack of a Senegal female lawmaker Hon Amy Ndiaye by a male colleague in their National Assembly – a video that has gone viral and attracted condemnation of this act.

A member of the Senegalese delegation to the Community Parliament, Abdoulaye Vilane raised this issue at the plenary on Saturday, December 3, 2022 when Liberia and Sierra Leone were scheduled to present their country report to the plenary.

The third deputy Speaker of the Community Parliament Memounatou Ibrahima, fourth deputy Speaker Adja Satu Camara Pinto Hon. Abdoulaye Vilane and the Parliament Secretariat are to issue a statement in the coming days.

On point of order his colleague from Togo drew Mr. Speaker’s attention that the House has an agenda it has adopted for the day, they should and asked that they stick to the agenda which Speaker Dr. Sidie M. Tunis agreed with.

The Speaker on the subject matter pointed out that, respect for women anywhere is very important and whatever the circumstance violence against women should not be allowed, and recounted that there has been violence before in the Sierra Leone Parliament and other parliaments within the sub-region and the world at large.

And as a Speaker the attack of the Senegalese female MP, what he saw on the video circulating is something the community parliament will look at, at a later time, they will look at other videos from other parliament irrespective of where the incident happened in this particular case all of them are concerned because of what they saw.

“A man coming across whether the person is an MP coming across and actually beating up a woman, I am sure we will look at it, but like what the MP from Togo said there is an agenda that has been adopted and any other thing relating to the matter will come later on”.

The Rt. Hon speaker urged a Committee of the Community Parliament, Committee on Political Affairs, Peace, Security and African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) to take a critical look at the kind of things happening now.

If the need be a visit be made to Senegal either in January or February of next year not because of the female MP attacked in question, but to look at the entire political situation considering the outcome of their Legislative Assembly election.

There are a lot of changes that has taken place in Senegal, that probably warrant the intervention of that committee and from what I hear, it’s the opposition MP that beat up the government MP normally it’s the other way round but this time it’s the opposition MP and its very serious even if your visit is for a week, he stated.

Speaker Tunis backed the point raised by Abdoulaye Vilane, stating that if there were security forces around when the female MP was in danger all that was needed was to call the security to come in.

“If my Speaker in Sierra Leone’s life is in danger we cannot handle, the best you can do is to call in the state security. I am the Speaker of ECOWAS Parliament, I am not justifying police entering our parliament, I am only saying you need a police to protect the Hon Speaker and Hon members if there was a police officer around, this will not have happened in Senegal”.

“Let say in the case of Sierra Leone, if the police were not around, “our Speaker would have been in the hospital by now”, he added.

Kwaku Sakyi-Danso/Ghanamps.com

A member of Nigerians delegation to the Community Parliament, Awaji-Inombek D. Abiante has said the reduction in the budgetary allocation to the ECOWAS Radio in Monrovia for the year ended December 31, 2023 is a minus and a no no.

According to him Parliament should revisit the issue and rather maintain the allocation given to the ECOWA Radio in the 2022 budgetary allocation rather than cutting fifty percent of their budgetary allocation.

In an interview he noted that other lawmakers in the Community Parliament shares his sentiment, stating that the reduction in the budgetary allocation has to do with the Radio station not utilizing this year’s budgetary allocations.

“I do not understand their impediment towards the untilisation; were they given the go ahead to manage themselves? It has not been clear and from the explanation, I think something has not been properly disclosed to us. If truly we want to have the participation of the various communities and truly we want others to know what we do and probably have that support it’s important that we support the radio and provide them with all that they will require in terms of equipment and man power, getting to online platforms. Most of us if you ask do not even know that ECOWAS has a radio situated somewhere in Monrovia”, he stated.

And further added that the Head of the Radio station should have been invited to tell lawmakers, explain to lawmakers why they were unable to utilise what was appropriated to them, they need to know.

For someone who has not come to parliament to defend his or her position and tell us that the person could not utislise allocation for 2022, “I do not see how that fit into the purpose of what we are doing”.

In addition, he questioned, if in Liberia the ECOWAS Radio is broadcasting; he does not know and if they are broadcasting what is the range, how many people do they reach? “There is a lot of question surrounding the ECOWAS radio and the reduction in budget”.

“If you in Ghana cannot receive signal and I cannot receive in Nigeria and several other communities cannot receive and they are returning money and cutting down on their budget, a lot of things are still unknown to members of Parliament”.

He indicated they are desirous and want to understand what the challenges are; unless and until there is proper oversight and an invitation to the Head of Radio to appear before the Parliament and tell them their own side of the story what happen to the radio station, the true picture will not be known.

Kwaku Sakyi-Danso/Ghanamps.com

The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Commission, in collaboration with other sponsors have sponsored the training of journalists within the West African Sub-region on the WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA) and African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) Agreement.

In all thirty journalists from the English speaking West Africa member states and French speaking member states are being hosted in Abuja Nigeria for this training programme.

 Dr. Sacko Seydou programme officer competition and informal trade who represented the Commissioner for Trade in an interview with Ghanamps.com noted that the training will offer journalists selected within the West African sub-region the opportunity to better understand issues relating to AfCFTA and put them in a better position to communicate issue better to ECOWAS citizens and civil society on the trade agreement.

He said there is good opportunity for the region to enhance the integration process and the journalists should be the first point of contact to communicate to citizens of the member states and to the private sector.

“That is why we are having this training, to give them good background and information on the agreement for the Commission to fast track it and ensure that member states will be on the same page of understanding on what the two agreement can help us with the integration process”, he said.

He added that as a sub-region, we need to be very competitive, to take advantage of the whole process. We need to gain something, but if within our sub-region people do not know what is going on, then we will be lacking behind; our role now is to communicate”.

Kwaku Sakyi-Danso/Ghanamps.com

The ECOWAS Parliament at its plenary on Wednesday, November 30, 2022 during the ongoing 2022 Second Ordinary Session of the Parliament holding in Abuja from 24 Nov – December 18, 2022, adopted the report and recommendations for the ECOWAS Commission’s consolidated budget of UA418, 072,408 for 2023.

Presided by the Honourable Speaker, Dr. Sidie Mohamed Tunis, the Parliament also mandated the Speaker to convey the favourable opinion on the ECOWAS Commission’s Adhoc Committee report and recommendation to the Chairman of the Council of the Heads of State for consideration.

It would be recalled that the Administration and Finance Committee (AFC) of the ECOWAS Commission has earlier presented for the Parliament’s consideration a draft budget of Four Hundred and Twenty-Seven Million Unit of Account (UA 427,979,594) for 2023.

The Chairperson of the AFC, Cristina Pedreira who made the Presentation before Members of the Parliament’, said that the Committee came up with the draft budget and recommendations sequel to the 32nd Meeting of the AFC which held from November 14 – 21, 2022.

Meanwhile, the AFC report indicated a general appeal to member states to comply with the provisions of the ECOWAS Community Levy protocol to avoid imposition of the stipulated sanctions.
This elicited contributions at plenary by Parliamentarians who decried the lukewarm attitude of some member states with regard to non-payment by certain member states of community levies.

These taxes, it should be remembered, constitute between 70 and 90% of the Community budget and are levied by each Member State through a mechanism known as the “community levy” which is at a rate of 0. 5% imposed on goods from non-ECOWAS member states.

The parliamentarians denounced the attitude of certain countries which have not made any repayments since the beginning of this year 2022. They rose up against this state of affairs, considering that the States up to date with their contributions cannot, out of simple convenience, continue to pay instead of others.

Parliamentarians were surprised that Member States such as Burkina-Faso and Guinea are up to date with their dues while these countries are experiencing a military-political crisis that is disrupting their economies. On the other hand, they argue, countries that enjoy political and institutional stability are unable to honor their commitments to the community by paying back the community taxes that have been levied.

The parliamentarians then demanded that parliament deal with this situation urgently so that it does not happen again next year.

On this issue, Cape Verdean parliamentarians called on the parliament to use the mechanisms at its disposal to find a way out of this worrying situation.

Ghanamps.com

Minister for Food and Agriculture, Dr. Owusu Afriyie Akoto has told Parliament the Eastern Region will host the National Farmers Day celebration on the theme, “Accelerating Agricultural Development Through Value Addition”.
According to him pursuant to Public Holidays Act, 2001 (Act 601), this year’s National Farmers’ Day, the 38th edition, falls on Friday, 2nd December, 2022.

In a statement on the floor of the House he noted that, preparations are feverishly underway to ensure a memorable and successful occasion the choice of the Eastern Region was based on a long-standing rotational principle for determining the venue of National Farmers’ Day celebrations in the country.

The theme aligns with government’s vision of modernizing and transforming agriculture, relevant objectives of the President’s Coordinated Programme of Socio-economic Development Policies, and the Sustainable Development Goals, especially Goals one(1) and two (2) which advocate the eradication of extreme Poverty in all forms and Zero Hunger respectively.

Mr. Speaker, the strategic intervention and the success of the Planting for Food and Jobs (PFI) campaign, speaks clearly to government’s relentless efforts of systematically addressing the long- standing problems of Ghana’s agriculture, he said.

The Horticultural sub-sector now has three new Greenhouse centres located at Dawhenya, Bodwiase and Akomadan in the Greater Accra, Central and Ashanti Regions respectively.

Others include the construction and rehabilitation of major irrigation schemes, feeder roads and 80(1000mt tons capacity) warehouses constructed throughout the country.

Dr. Owusu Afriyie told the House in 2019 the agriculture sector grew by 4.7% followed by 7.4% in 2020 and a record 8.4% in 2021. With the excellent rains this year we expect the substantial growth performance of recent years to be repeated this year 2022.

Whiles, the strongest growth in recent years have increased the share of agriculture sector in Ghana’s GDP from 18% in 2016 to 22% by 2021. These impressive results were posted by the sector against all odds, when multiple external shocks and unfavourable external global conditions had impacted virtually every economy including Ghana.

Supply chains had been badly disrupted resulting in acute shortage in critical inputs like fertilizers, the Animal sector which had been badly hit by diseases such as swine flu and the Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza, while farmlands were also being destroyed by galamsey activities, he stated.

“Mr. Speaker, we in government recognize that the impressive performance of the agricultural sector is largely due to sacrifices and the tireless efforts of our heroic farmers. As a people, the least we can do therefore is to continue to celebrate and reward our farmers with rising farm productivity and incomes”.

Kwaku Sakyi-Danso/Ghanamps.com