Nigeria’s Foreign Affairs Minister, Geoffrey Onyeama has said the Country is not ready for the single ECOWAS member states currency “Eco”, that Nigeria can’t implement the policy in 2020, and this position was reached by a general consensus of the ECOWAS member states. 
Onyeama, who revealed this on Thursday, January 16, to journalists in Abuja. The Minister also said that meeting up the convergence criteria for a single currency was one of the preconditions to be met by member States to achieve implementation of the single currency.
The minister said that only one country out of the ECOWAS member states had been able, for over a period of three years, to maintain the convergence criteria.
“Majority of the countries understand that we are not quite ready immediately to go into this single currency market, but it is a process.
“Some of the French-speaking countries understand that since their currency, the CFA, is linked to the euro, that they also have to de-link, to start preparing towards this single market.
“And so, they have taken certain measures where the 50 per cent they ordinarily have to deposit with the French Central Bank, that is no longer going to be the case.
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“France is no longer going to be represented on the board of the bank, So, there really is no major contradictions.
“There is no question of anybody colonising anybody. It was an initiative of the African countries and France accepted.
“The Eco is now going to be linked at the exchange rate with the euro. But that was a request, a specific request by the African countries,” he said.
Geoffrey Onyeama said that everything is being done and is being undertaken by sovereign countries, exercising their sovereign wealth.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that ECOWAS Presidents during the 55th Ordinary Session of the ECOWAS Authority of Heads of States and Government adopted Eco as the official name for the ECOWAS single currency.
Président Mahamadou Issoufou, Chairman of the Authority and Niger Republic’s President, had said that implementation of the single currency by 2020 was a priority on his agenda. 
Photo Credit: Getty
