National Action Committee, African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AFCFTA) has highlighted the need to torrent down its activities to the subnational level with the state government playing a major role.Mr. Francis Anatogu, who is the secretary of the committee, said this on Monday during a joint news conference with the Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF), in Abuja, on the AfCFTA Subnational Strategy Workshop scheduled to hold from Tuesday to Thursday in Abuja.

Federal Government set to export capacity for each state.

Mr. francis Anatogu said that for AfCFTA to be truly successful in Nigeria, there was a great need to work with states to find their niche in Africa’s export market.

“We cannot do this without improving the capacity of our people,’’ he said.

According to Mr. Francis Anatogu, the first of the strategic goals in the implementation plan is to grow export capacity of every state to the tune of $1.2 billion with a focus on products where there is a competitive advantage.

He also said that, the subnational strategy workshop would serve as an intervention that would put the nation on course to make the AfCFTA goal a reality for Nigeria.

“Over the next three days, the NAC-AfCFTA will create a platform to engage and interact with State Technical Working Groups expected to be in attendance.

“This is with the goal of reaching an understanding of tailoring their economic and development plans to include the requirements of the AfCFTA.

“There is need to ensure that the groups are aware of the support available from the Federal Government and lay the foundation for a single vision and strategy between federal and state governments, to push the AfCFTA agenda in Nigeria.

The AFCFTA aim is to reinvigorate our country’s industrialization and to make Nigeria a destination market for goods and services with free movement of Africans and investments among members, countries.

This will help to abolish 90 per cent of tariffs and reduce non-tariff barriers to magnify intra-African trade and form the foundation of the establishment of a continental customs union, thereby creating the largest single market in the world.