Senate President Godswill Akpabio has led Nigeria’s push for deeper West African integration at the 152nd Assembly of the Inter-Parliamentary Union in Istanbul, Turkey, urging coordinated regional action and warning that failure to unite could expose West Africa to new forms of neocolonialism at a time of growing global fragmentation.
Akpabio made the call during a high-level bilateral meeting with the Speaker of the Ivorian National Assembly, Patrick Jerome Achi, in which both leaders aligned on the urgency of forging a stronger, more cohesive regional bloc capable of withstanding mounting external economic and political pressures.
At the centre of their discussions was the Abidjan-Accra-Lagos Coastal Highway, a flagship infrastructure project designed to transform mobility and trade across the sub-region. The corridor, linking major economic hubs and connecting over 300 million people, is expected to reduce travel time between Lagos and Abidjan from three days to approximately eight hours upon completion. Designed as a modern dual carriageway superhighway operating under a supranational legal framework, the project will eliminate cross-border bottlenecks through harmonized regulations, with five ECOWAS member states having already enacted enabling legislation to support seamless movement along the corridor.
Akpabio commended President Bola Tinubu for backing the initiative and described the highway as a transformative economic artery for the sub-region that would unlock trade and stimulate development across the corridor.
Both leaders stressed the need to reinforce the Economic Community of West African States and prioritize the reintegration of Sahel countries that had withdrawn from the bloc, describing regional cohesion as critical to economic survival and political stability. They identified structural barriers to integration, including language divides, weak infrastructure, fragmented markets, and brain drain, and called for African countries to better harness their human and natural resources.
Achi, for his part, emphasized that sustainable growth across the region must be driven by the private sector, with governments providing policy direction and legislative support. He called for reforms to unlock investment, expand markets, and address unemployment among the region’s rapidly growing youth population, identifying peace, education, and economic opportunity as the three foundational pillars on which Africa’s development depended.
On security, both leaders advocated technology-driven border management, enhanced intelligence-sharing, and coordinated regional surveillance systems to protect open-border arrangements as integration deepened. They also raised concern about emerging threats including digital and economic recolonization, calling for proactive investments in technology and innovation.
The meeting concluded with a firm commitment to deepen parliamentary collaboration, align legislative frameworks across both countries, and strengthen oversight of regional development initiatives, with Akpabio and Achi expressing confidence that coordinated leadership between Nigeria and Côte d’Ivoire could unlock unprecedented regional growth.
