Nigeria has resisted relentless European Union pressure to sign the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA). Sub-Saharan Africa's second largest economy insists it won't sign any such deal with the EU unless the agreement was consistent with the country's aspirations and West Africa's development agenda, writes *Kwesi W. Obeng.

Accounting for close to 40 per cent of trade between the European Union (EU) and the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP)
group of countries, West Africa is the single most important region to Europe, in terms of trade, in the ongoing Economic
Partnership Agree-ment (EPA) negotiations.

The EPAs are pacts that would require ACP nations to open up their already widely liberalized markets even further to EU goods and services in exchange for open access to the European market. Six economic blocs in the global south make up the 77-member ACP, a group of former colonies of major European powers.

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