Olufemi Adediran 
The Federal Government, yesterday, lamented that infrastructure deficit may hamper the implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Area Agreement (Af- CFTA). The Minister of Trade and Investment, Otunba Niyi Adebayo, who stated this at a press conference in Abeokuta, Ogun State, noted that infrastructure deficit must be fixed for Nigeria to take full advantage of the AfCFTA. Adebayo, who spoke through the Director of Trade in the Ministry, Aliyu Abubakar, led the National Action Committee on the AfCTA to the state as part of the nationwide sensitisation and sub-national engagement.
He also expressed the concern that lack of information by the stakeholders may pose greater challenge to the success of the AfCFTA. According to him, Nigeria must address the bottleneck in order to benefit from the agreement which seeks to create a single market in Africa with a population of 1.2 billion people and a combined Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of $3.4 trillion. Adebayo, noted that the bulk of Nigeria’s wealth are domiciled in Ogun State, hence the need to domesticate Af- CFTA at the state and grassroots level.
He said “We have gone to Kaduna State as first point of call, we have also been to Bauchi State, we have been to Lagos and now we are in Ogun. But we have a plan, we will be going round the 36 states and FCT to engage all the stakeholders.”