The Nigerian Speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila, has met with speakers of parliaments in other African countries to discuss ways to seek from external debts.
The Speaker announced the meeting on his verified Twitter handle, @FemiGbaja, on Thursday night.
Gbajabiamila tweeted, “Today, I engaged with my colleagues from Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Rwanda, Senegal and South Africa to discuss how African speakers can collaborate in the joint task of loosening the stranglehold of foreign debt on our economies, a precursor to hosting the 2021 Conference of African Speakers in Abuja.”
Earlier on August 17, 2020, the Speaker had convened a similar meeting where they agreed that there was an urgent need to push for debt cancellation for the continent from their multilateral and bilateral partners.
The meeting also boosted the initiative of the Speaker to establish the Conference of African Speakers and Heads of Parliaments, a body meant to facilitate increased collaboration between speakers, heads of parliament and national assemblies across Africa countries.
In a statement issued by the Special Adviser to the Speaker on Media and Publicity, Mr. Lanre Lasis, it said the African Speakers would also seek to advance the African development agenda within and outside the continent in conjunction with the executive arms of government and the African regional institutions.
Gbajabiamila at a previous meeting, had stated the urgent need to join local and global efforts to push for the cancellation of external debts owed by various countries on the continent.
