Nigeria Joins Common Market

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31114, 18 July 1966, Page 11

Nigeria Joins Common Market

(N Z.P.A. Reuter— Copyright) LAGOS, July 17. Nigeria yesterday became the 19th and largest African country to be associated with the sixnation European Common Market under an agreement signed in Lagos.

The agreement was signed at a ceremony in Nigeria's Parliament Building by Brigadier B. A. O. Ogundipe, the Nigerian Army Chief of Staff and a member of the Supreme Military Council, and Dr. Joseph Luns, the Dutch Foreign Minister and current president of the Common Market’s Council of Ministers. Nigeria's population of ■ some 50 million is slightly I more than that of the poputa-, tions of all the other 18 African associated States together.; Nigeria is also the first, English-speaking African coun-| try in the Commonwealth to join the European Commun-1 ity. Limited Agreement Nigeria’s association agreement is slightly more limited in character than the Yaounde convention of June governing the association of the other 18 with the Common Market. That convention set up a free trade area with common institutions and provided aid totalling about £260 million over five years to be granted by the European Development Fund to the States concerned. The Nigerian agreement is concerned only with trade.

Nigeria wilt not join the common institutions of the Yaounde convention or receive financial aid. Her main exports to the Common Market countries will be subject to quantitative restrictions.