NEPAD must be integrated into AU...Obasanjo insists
President Olusegun Obasanjo has restated the need to integrate the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD), into the structure and processes of the African Union,(AU).
``NEPAD as a profound instrument for change and re-engineering could never have stood alone and aloof from the AU", President Obasanjo told the 16th Summit of NEPAD heads of state and government implementation committee on the eve of the Summit Sunday in Addis Ababa.
Obasanjo said the decision taken in Maputo to integrate the NEPAD process into the AU was intended to complete the process of socio-economic transformation.
According to him, the NEPAD process should continue to make room for African heads of state to take hands on leadership of the African development process as a committee of the AU assembly.
While commending the NEPAD Steering committee for living up to expectation, Obasanjo called for ``some adjustments in the status and composition'' of the committee in view of the envisaged deepened role of NEPAD in national and regional processes.
He then called on African countries to reach out to each other first and foremost in the continent in the spirit of fraternal solidarity, unity of shared aspirations and common future for information and shared knowledge of possible solutions.
On the conflicts in Darfur and Somalia, the Nigerian leader expressed the hope that the crisis and the restoration of a national leader in both countries respectively would be effected soon.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), reports that President Obasanjo will on Monday attend the opening session of the AU where he will deliver an address on ``Climate Change in Africa''.