EPA Review Annex Documents - DFID

the need for deliberation on regional integration issues arises either from within the ministry,
from the ECOWAS Commission or from problems associated with the implementation of some
of the ECOWAS protocols. Thus, when Ghana released a legislation that increased the capital
base of trading enterprises in which many Nigerians in Ghana are engaged, there was a need
for inter-ministerial meetings between the then Federal Ministry of Commerce, Foreign Affairs,
and the Nigeria Investment Promotion Commission. Activities of the bilateral agreement team
are stepped up from mostly political pronunciations of stronger socio-political and economic
bonds between Nigeria and other countries or visitations between Nigerian and foreign
governments, which are composed of meetings to identify areas of mutual interest that often
culminate into signing of memoranda of understanding (MOUs).
Table 1 Structure of Nigeria’s Department of Trade and Staffing
S/N Section Number of staff Number in Abuja Share of
Total
1 Director’s Office 5 100
2.3
2 Bilateral 14 100 6.5
3 Multilateral 9 100 4.1
Intra-Africa 8 100 3.7
4
UNCTAD 7 100 3.2
5
World Trade
28
6
Organisation
a 78.6 12.9
7 Trade Promotion 43 100 19.8
8 TIC&P 3 100 1.4
Weights and
91 17.6 41.9
9
Measures
10 SCUML 9 100 4.1
217 100
Source: Federal Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Abuja, 2009; ‘a’ includes six staff at the WTO office:
1 Ambassador, 3 Counsellors, 1 Accountant and 1 Secretary.
The EPA negotiating team features two additional committees that the others do not have.
These are the Ministerial Advisory Committee and the Technical Committee on EPA. The
Technical Committee on the EPA (see composition on Table 2) ideally meets once a month,
however in some cases will not meet for up to three months because in some cases the
committee’s meetings are funded in by the DFID. In the ENFP is an EPA sub-committee which
should perform the functions of the Ministerial Advisory Committee and the Technical
Committee on EPA but for the fact that the ENFP hardly ever convenes meetings. Indeed, it is
because the ENFP can be regarded as moribund that the advisory and technical committees
were created to fill the advisory and technical vacuum in the case of the EPA; this need was
also induced by the intensity of discussion required. The ad-hoc inter-ministerial committees are
undeniably also more active in the case of the other negotiating areas. Unfortunately, with the
quantum of preparations required to negotiate the EPA, only 3.3% of the staff of the Department
of Trade are in the Intra-Africa section which negotiates the EPA (Table 1). In totality, despite
the inadequacy of staff at the Ministry, the EPA negotiating structure appears to be the most
visible and active. Many reasons explain the high level of activities of the EPA negotiating team
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