By Innocent Anaba

Lagos—Ghana’s Trade and Industry Minister, Dr. Ekwow Spio-Garbrah, has charged the Section on Business Law, SBL, to continue playing its leadership role in the Nigerian Bar Association, NBA, especially at this period in time that African countries are seeking further regional integration.

Dr Spio-Garbrah, at the opening ceremony of the 9th Annual NBA-SBL law conference in Lagos, called on the SBL to continue to pave the way in the NBA.

“I hope that the SBL of the NBA will continue to be the leader out of the three sections of the NBA and rise to the occasion and help propel Africa to the great heights that it deserves,” said Dr Spio-Garbrah,  while calling on NBA and its Ghanaian counterpart to play key roles in Africa’s drive for regional integration.

“Nigeria and Ghana are now in a very important strategic position to collaborate and to learn from each other to improve the ease with which they do business in the ECOWAS sub region. And with Ghana’s President as the current chairperson of the African Union’s high level trade committee, Ghana remains committed to working closely with Nigeria to advance ECOWAS regional integration process so that we can expand business opportunities for our private sector operators.”

The African Union Heads of State are due to launch a Continental Free Trade area for Africa later in the month at their next summit in Johannesburg, South Africa with the CFT expected to come into operation in the early parts of 2017.

Dr Spio-Garbrah said: “Africa’s continental, regional and national regulatory institutions will have their hands full over the next few years or so to work assiduously to harness a wide range of standard procedures and documentary requirements to remove bottlenecks to the free movement of people and goods in Africa, and to improve the ease of doing business on our continent.

“Ghana and Nigeria, and the Bar associations of both countries, have learnt a lot of lessons from the various experiences they have had over the years which will come in handy during this period of integration on the continent.”

In addition to the SBL, the NBA has two other sections: Section on Legal Practice (SLP) and Section on Public Interest and Development Law, SPIDEL.