A former All Progressives Congress, APC, presidential aspirant, Tein Jack-Rich, has appealed for admission of Nigeria into the G-20 economic group.
Jack-Rich made the appeal during the US Africa Leaders Summit in Washington DC.
He noted that the inclusion of Nigeria and the African Union into the G-20 would be a milestone in global economic acceleration while urging Africans in the Diaspora to work towards achieving this goal.
According to Jack-Rich, Africa will be a force to reckon with if Pacific and Caribbean countries are integrated into the continent.
“Nigeria is the heartbeat of Africa if you talk about trade. We need to integrate the diasporan countries, and I haven’t heard anyone talk about the pacific countries.
“We have about 15 countries there, and we have 16 countries in the Caribbean, so it’s important to integrate these two diasporan countries with the African continent.
“And as part of the African continent of the free trade area, it’s important to recognise the potential these two diasporan countries actually have so that we can have a strong bloc. That makes Africa about 85 countries.
“Today Africa is about 30 per cent of global GDP, that’s about two and half trillion dollars, that is not strong for us.”
Jack-Rich said to achieve the goal Africa needed the right collaboration.
He said admitting Africa into the G-20 would greatly help the continent and would go a long way in ensuring its technological advancement.
“And another appeal I want to make is to see that Nigeria is also part of G-20, that is going to go a long way because Nigeria is about 19.3 per cent of Africa’s total GDP; that’s a strong economy.
“I am in the energy business; one thing we need right now is the technological collaboration, technology that you have matured, I mean from the G-7 point of view, you can actually be employed into enabling Africa to build the right economic gateway.
“As you talk about Climate Change today, one thing you can recognise is, in spite of the fact that Africa only admits about three per cent of global greenhouse gas, we have a youth population that needs to be engaged.
“And to engage the population, we need jobs, and to create that, we need industries.
“So we need you in the diaspora to enable us to access those technologies that you have matured so that the technology becomes the smart gateway for Africa to build its industrial value chain and reduce the greenhouse gas the world is talking about today,” Jack-Rich said.