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The Federal Government has asked states across the nation should take advantage of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) agreement in a bid to attract investments to the states for economic productivity.

This was disclosed by Francis Anatogu, Secretary, National Action Committee (NAC) on AfCFTA, while on a courtesy visit to Mr. Asishana Okauru, the Director-General, Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF) on Friday in Abuja.

Anatogu said the FG wants states and private stakeholders to maximize the trade deal to ensure Nigeria takes full opportunity of the African Market.

He added that the FGs Committee on AfCFTA implementation wants the Governors to implement regional and local policies to integrate the AfCFTA in their states through sponsorship and participation in AfCFTA sensitization programmes.

It is no longer news that we have been clamoring for the diversification of our economy over the years.

As a committee, we are now working toward how we as a nation can properly utilize business doors being offered by AfCFTA. The NGF represents the states as good channel to reach out to the state government and that is why we have reached out to it.

We want them to take advantage of AfCFTA because as a nation, we need to produce what we sell; we need to invest and attract investors. To attract investors, we need good policies, infrastructure, and good conditions for ease of doing business.

He added that free trade is important to diversify Nigerias economy and all necessary leaders need to be on board. He urged that Governors must provide partnership for coordination at local levels.

Trade and all the things around it are very important for the development of our country, so we have to get our principals involved in this project.

To make any meaningful impact from this project, the sub-national leaders must be involved and the forum we will provide that platform for easy coordination.

They all know that we have signed this agreement but how to get them involvedis very importantfor the benefit of all, he said.

What you should know

Nairametrics reported last week that the FG announced that it ratified Nigerias membership to the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), ahead of the December 5, 2020 deadline. The agreement goes into effect from the 1st of January 2021.

Yewande Sadiku, CEO of Nigerian Investment Promotion Council (NIPC),said in September that Nigeria was more ready for the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), due to her domestic market manufacturing value addition capacity, which is 7 times the average of the top 20 economies in Africa and others.

Mr. Francis Anatogu, stated earlier that the agreement would reduce the erosion of the naira, which has suffered nearly 90% devaluation since 2016, through exports of Nigerian-made goods and services, and give the naira exposure to other currencies.

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Terrorism: Nigeria and USA committed to defeating ISIS, Boko Haram and others - NSA - Nairametrics

The proposition seemed tailor-made for one of the nations most diverse and liberal states. California officials asked voters to overturn a 24-year-old ban on affirmative action in education, employment and contracting.

The state political and cultural establishment worked as one to pass this ballot measure. The governor, a senator, members of Congress, university presidents and civil rights leaders called it a righting of old wrongs.

Women and people of color are still at a sharp disadvantage by almost every measure, The Los Angeles Times wrote in an editorial endorsement.

Yet on Election Day, the proposition failed by a wide margin, 57 percent to 43 percent, and Latino and Asian-American voters played a key role in defeating it. The outcome captured the gap between the vision laid out by the liberal establishment in California, which has long imagined the creation of a multiracial, multiethnic coalition that would embrace progressive causes, and the sentiments of many Black, Latino, Asian and Arab voters.

Variations of this puzzle could be found in surprising corners of the nation on Election Day, as slices of ethnic and racial constituencies peeled off and cut against Democratic expectations.

We should not think of demography as destiny, said Professor Omar Wasow, who studies politics and voting patterns at Princeton University. These groups are far more heterogeneous than a monolith and campaigns often end up building their own idiosyncratic coalition.

Asian-American Californians opposed the affirmative action measure in large numbers. A striking number of East and South Asian students have gained admission to elite state universities, and their families spoke to reporters of their fear that their children would suffer if merit in college selection was given less weight. That battle carried echoes of another that raged the past few years in New York City, where a white liberal mayors efforts to increase the number of Black and Latino students in selective high schools angered working- and middle-class South and East Asian families whose children have gained admission to the schools in large numbers.

Theres more texture to California blue politics than you might think, said Lanhee Chen, a fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution at Stanford University and policy director for Mitt Romneys 2012 presidential run. Identity politics only go so far. There is a sense on affirmative action that people resent being categorized by progressives.

Latinos, too, appear sharply divided. Prominent Latino nonprofit and civil rights organizations endorsed the affirmative action proposition even as all 14 of Californias majority-Latino counties voted it down.

Latinos make up more than half of San Bernardino Countys population, although significantly fewer turn out to vote. More residents there voted on the affirmative action proposition than for president, rejecting it by a margin of 28 percentage points. In rural Imperial County, in the southeastern corner of the state, 85 percent of the population is Latino. The voters there who gave Joseph R. Biden Jr. a nearly 27-point margin of victory went against the affirmative action measure by 16 percentage points.

The results suggest that Democrats may need to adjust their strategy as the complexities of class, generation and experience, and the competing desires of these demographic groups become clear. Since the dawn of the 21st century, it has become commonplace for party leaders to talk of a rising demographic tide that is destined to lift the Democrats to dominance. That liberal coalition is seen as resting on a bedrock of upper-middle-class white voters, alongside working- and middle-class Black, Latino and Asian voters.

In broad strokes, that narrative held. Black voters, along with a shift in the white suburban vote, played a pivotal role in delivering Georgia to the Democratic column (although so closely that a statewide audit is taking place). So, too, Black voters in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia voted overwhelmingly for Democrats as did well-to-do majority-white suburbs and gave Pennsylvania and therefore the national election to President-elect Biden.

In Arizona, Latino voters piled up large margins for Mr. Biden and tipped the state narrowly into the Democratic column for the first time since 1996. Representative Ruben Gallego, the Democratic congressman from Phoenix who is a former Marine and a Harvard graduate, noted that several decades of aggressive tactics by Republican governors and white sheriffs had stirred activism among the young Latinos who dominate politics there.

The Republicans caught Latino lightning in the bottle in Florida and South Texas, but not here, Mr. Gallego said. We are very politicized. Its just important that white liberals dont impose their thoughts and policies on us.

Aside from those successes, however, the election presented complications wrapped one inside another for Democrats. In Texas and Florida, in California and in Colorado (where New York Times exit polls found that roughly 40 percent of white voters and 38 percent of Latino voters cast ballots for President Trump), the assumption that people of color would vote as a liberal Democratic bloc often proved illusory.

John Judis is a liberal writer and scholar who in 2002 co-wrote The Emerging Democratic Majority, which became a seminal text for those who saw the Democratic Party as a political tide rising. He has since backed off that a touch.

People of color is a term thats been adopted by the cultural left as a way of arguing that if these groups proportionately voted Democratic in the past, they will do so in the future, Mr. Judis said. I dont see how you can make the argument.

Viewing the Latino vote as monolithic fails, of course, to capture the often sharply varying politics and ethnicities of people hailing from nearly two dozen countries on two continents. The same is true when examining the behavior of Asian-American voters.

Philadelphia offers a snapshot: A record number of Latinos in the city, which is heavily Puerto Rican and Dominican, turned out and buoyed Mr. Biden. Yet exit polls also found that Latino voter support there for Mr. Trump leapt to 35 percent this year from 22 percent in 2016. In Milwaukee, an analysis by Urban Milwaukee reported an uptick in the Latino working-class vote for Mr. Trump, although a majority still favored Mr. Biden.

Along the Rio Grande in Texas, where some Mexican-American families, known as Tejanos, have roots that extend back four centuries, the vote margins shifted dramatically in 2020. Latino turnout soared, almost entirely to the benefit of Mr. Trump. Although Mr. Biden obtained more total votes in the four counties of the Rio Grande Valley than Hillary Clinton did in 2016, his margins of victory fell sharply.

The reasons offered for these results include poor field organizing by the Democratic Party, the cultural conservatism of some older Tejano families, and the fact that many in these often-dense counties find good-paying jobs with the Border Patrol.

Many voters, too, worried that Mr. Biden and the Democrats would impose a new coronavirus-driven shutdown, with dire consequences for the many thousands who own and labor for small businesses. Prof. Omar Valerio-Jimenez grew up in the Rio Grande Valley and teaches history at the University of Texas at San Antonio. Several of his old friends and cousins voted for Mr. Trump.

They faced this challenge: Do they continue to open our stores and restaurants and churches, which lets us pay our bills, he said, or do we quarantine and not have the money to pay our bills?

Muslim voters also confounded Democratic strategists with their support for Mr. Trump reaching 35 percent, according to The Associated Press. This, too, is a constituency difficult to pigeonhole, as it encompasses Africans, Arabs, South Asians and Europeans.

A sizable number of Muslims have experienced Donald Trump and to the surprise of Democrats they said, We want more of that, Shadi Hamid of the Brookings Institution said.

Analyzing vote shifts is a tricky business, particularly when trying to gauge why some Latino, Black or Arab voters moved from supporting a liberal Democratic candidate like Mrs. Clinton in 2016 to voting for a populist authoritarian Republican like Mr. Trump. Some analysts pointed to the appeal among male voters regardless of color or ethnicity of Mr. Trumps masculine persona. Others mentioned the performance of the national economy, which had hummed along until the plague arrived.

There were small, intriguing changes in the Black vote as well. The Timess exit polls in Georgia found that 16 percent of Black men voted for Mr. Trump. (Compared with 7 percent of Black women there.) And to chart the votes along the so-called Black Belt in Mississippi, which includes 10 counties along the Mississippi River, was to find that although Mr. Biden won handily, his margin in nearly every county was two to three percentage points smaller than Mrs. Clintons.

The unanswered question is whether the 2020 election will be a one-off, the voting patterns scrambled by an unusually polarizing president who attracted and repelled in near equal measure. If it signals something larger, political scientists noted, some Latino and Asian voters might begin to behave like white voters, who have cleaved along class lines, with more affluent residents in urban areas voting Democratic while a decided majority of rural and exurban residents support Republicans.

Then there is California, where the sands of change blow in varying directions. In 2018, Democrats swept the Orange County congressional seats. In 2020, the Republicans have rebounded and taken at least two of those seats.

The Republican candidate Michelle Steel, who is Korean-American, came out against the affirmative action proposition, a stance that proved popular with her Asian-American constituents, as well as many white voters. And on election night, Ms. Steel rode that support to a narrow win against the incumbent Democratic congressman, Harley Rouda.

This is the challenge for liberal Democrats, Professor Wasow said. In a diverse society, how do you enact politics that may advance racial equality without reinforcing racial divisions that are counterproductive and hurt you politically?

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Liberals Envisioned a Multiracial Coalition. Voters of Color Had Other Ideas. - The New York Times

Now that Biden appears to have won the presidency, liberals are telling us, like they do every time we switch from a Republican president to a Democratic president, it is time for our nation to Heal and come together.

I suppose they mean we must all support the killing of babies before and even after they are born, the government is more important than God, handouts are more important than jobs, and that we should support rioters and looters and defund the police.

Well, they can count me out. The division in this country the past four years was caused by liberals, not conservatives, who made up a fake Russian collusion story and who rioted and looted in liberal-controlled cities.

One thing I will do is say Biden is my president, no matter if I support his policies or not, unlike the whiners and crybabies of the past four years who said over and over Trump is not my president!

Thank you and have a great day.

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Voice of the People: Deep division caused by liberals - Kankakee Daily Journal

The American voters chose to give the Democrats the White House, but denied them a mandate. Even if Democrats somehow squeak out wins in both Georgia Senate races, the Senate will then pivot on Joe Manchin of West Virginia.

Not only does this take much of the liberal wish list off the table, it also makes deep structural reform of federal institutions impossible. There will be no new voting rights act in honor of the late Representative John Lewis, no statehood for Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico, and no Supreme Court packing. For that matter, the filibuster will not be eliminated, which would have been the essential predicate for all of those other changes as well as expansive climate or health care legislation. Anything that Democrats want to do that requires a party-line vote is forlorn.

In response to this disappointment, a number of left-of-center commentators have concluded that democracy lost in 2020. Our constitutional order, they argue, is rotten and an obstacle to majority rule. The Electoral College and the overrepresentation of small, mostly conservative states in the Senate is an outrage. As Ezra Klein has argued, our constitution forces Democrats to win voters ranging from the far left to the center right, but Republicans can win with only right-of-center votes. As a consequence, liberals cant have nice things.

The argument is logical, but it is also a strategic dead end. The United States is and in almost any plausible scenario will continue to be a federal republic. We are constituted as a nation of states, not as a single unitary community, a fact that is hard-wired into our constitutional structure. Liberals may not like this, just as a man standing outside in a rainstorm does not like the fact he is getting soaked. But instead of cursing the rain, it makes a lot more sense for him to find an umbrella.

Liberals need to adjust their political strategy and ideological ambitions to the country and political system we actually have, and make the most of it, rather than cursing that which they cannot change.

There are certainly some profound democratic deficits built into our federal constitution. Even federal systems like Germany, Australia and Canada do not have the same degree of representative inequality that the Electoral College and Senate generate between a citizen living in California versus one living in Wyoming.

There is also next to nothing we can do about it. The same system that generates this pattern of representative inequality also means that short of violent revolution the beneficiaries of our federal system will not allow for it to be changed, except at the margins. If Democrats at some point get a chance to get full representation for Washington, D.C., they should take it. But beyond that, there are few if any pathways to changing either the Electoral College or the structure of the Senate. So any near-term strategy for Democrats must accept these structures as fixed.

The initial step in accepting our federal system is for Democrats to commit to organizing everywhere even places where we are not currently competitive. Led by Stacey Abrams, Democrats have organized and hustled in Georgia over the last couple of years, and the results are hard to argue with. Joe Biden should beg Ms. Abrams (or another proven organizer like Ben Wikler, the head of the party in Wisconsin) to take over the Democratic National Committee, dust off Howard Deans planning memos for a 50 state strategy from the mid-2000s and commit to building the formal apparatus of the Democratic Party everywhere.

This party-building needs to happen across the country, even where the odds seem slim, in order to help Democrats prospect for attractive issues in red states (and red places in purple states), to identify attractive candidates and groom them for higher office and to build networks of citizens who can work together to rebuild the party at the local level.

A necessary corollary of a 50 state strategy is accepting that creating a serious governing majority means putting together a policy agenda that recognizes where voters are, not where they would be if we had a fairer system of representation. That starts with an economics that addresses the radically uneven patterns of economic growth in the country, even if doing so means attending disproportionately to the interests of voters outside of the Democrats urban base. That is not a matter of justice, necessarily, but brute electoral arithmetic.

That does not mean being moderate, in the sense of incremental and toothless. From the financialization of our economy to our constrictive intellectual property laws to our unjust tax competition between states for firms, the economic deck really is stacked for the concentration of economic power on the coasts. Democrats in the places where the party is less competitive should be far more populist on these and other related issues, even if it puts them in tension with the partys megadonors.

We also need to recognize that the cultural values and rituals of Democrats in cosmopolitan cities and liberal institutional bastions like universities do not seem to travel well. Slogans like defund the police and abolish ICE may be mobilizing in places where three-quarters of voters pull the lever for Democrats. But it is madness to imagine that they could be the platform of a competitive party nationwide.

That doesnt mean that we should expect members of the Squad not to speak out for fear of freaking out the small town voters that Democrats like Representative Abigail Spanberger of Virginia represent. But it does mean recognizing that, unlike the more homogeneous Republicans, the Democrats have no choice but to be a confederation of subcultures. We need to develop internal norms of pluralism and coexistence appropriate to a loose band of affiliated politicians and groups, rather than those of a party that is the arm of a cohesive social movement.

The Democratic Party has a future within the constitution the country has. The question for the next decade is, will we withdraw into pointless dreams of sweeping constitutional change or make our peace with our country and its constitution, seeking allies in unlikely places and squeezing out what progress we can get by organizing everywhere, even when the odds of success seem slim.

Steven Teles, a political science professor at Johns Hopkins University and a senior fellow at the Niskanen Center, is an author, with Robert Saldin, of the book Never Trump: The Revolt of the Conservative Elites.

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Our Political System Is Unfair. Liberals Need to Just Deal With It. - The New York Times

Liberals never learn. At a time when the erosion of public trust is more dangerous than the plague swirling around us, you would think they would be careful about displays of hypocrisy. Instead, the same technocratic elites who rail about the sin of privilege and criticize Donald Trumps unraveling of the social fabric are telling us by their actions: Do as I say, not as I do.

The latest example comes to us by way of Gavin Newsom, Californias Democratic governor, who was photographed maskless at a Nov. 6, birthday party for a lobbyist. In so doing, he violated his own state guidelines. Newsom apologized, but the incident only underscored the widening social distance between the elites and the plebesand the sense that lockdowns are for the little people, while parties, salon visits, and swanky dinners are for me, but not for thee. Hypocrisy, thy name is Newsom.

And Newsom isnt the only Californian who thinks hes above the rules. Sen. Dianne Feinstein was recently spotted walking around the Senate maskless, and Nancy Pelosiwho drew controversy for visiting a hair salon in Septemberwas forced to cancel a dinner she was planning to welcome newly elected House Democrats after the event caused an uproar.

This is a trendand not just in the Golden State. These conspicuous displays of hypocrisy reinforce the notion that progressive elites think theyre better than the hoi polloi lumpenproletariat who are forced to follow their guidelines. The public might have rejected Trumps handling of the virus, but its easy to see why average Americans, who have to comply with COVID-19 regulations, feel disgruntled by such decadent displays.

Its almost as if the perpetrators are unaware that cultural aggrievement is the most potent force in modern American politics, and that, for a lot of Americans, complying with COVID rules means shuttering a business, postponing a wedding, or never getting to say goodbye to a loved one in a hospital. And, for many of us, it will mean not seeing family members this Thanksgiving.

Now imagine doing all of these things, and then seeing Gavin Newsom and California Medical Association officials enjoying themselves at the French Laundry.

During times of crisis, leaders have to ask others to sacrifice. But this only works when they earn the credibility to do sowhen followers believe that the leader has their best interest at heart and is sharing in the sacrifice. Never mind enduring any real hardship, Californians cant even count on Gavin Newsom to stay home and watch Schitts Creek on Netflix. And this sort of let them eat cake! imagery is even more galling coming from members of a political party fond of lecturing others about their privilege.

So why is this happening? In some cases, of course, the problem is simply that elites view themselves as being above the rules. In other cases, there is more than mere class snobbery at play; theres also political snobbery. More specifically, there is the sense that progressive causes (like protesting the police or celebrating Joe Bidens election) are exempt from the rules, because, after all, the cause is so goodso importantthat the ends justify the means. A Trump rally, for example, is dangerous and irresponsible, while street celebrations for Joe Biden are not just tolerated, but commended.

Case in point: This spring, conservatives protesting Michigans harsh lockdown policies were criticized for not social distancing. Now, some of these protesters behaved in ways that were unbecoming. But the subsequent behavior of liberals did little to quell their sense of victimhood and unfairness. Thats because, in early June, as the Detroit News reported Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who's voiced concerns about other demonstrations potentially spreading COVID-19 in recent weeks, participated Thursday in a civil rights march in Highland Park with hundreds of people who did not follow social distancing rules. (Dont worry, we are assured by the experts that protests probably did not cause a COVID spike.) To be sure, protesting police violence is legitimate and important, but so are a lot of other things weve been asked to curtail.

A more recent example occurred when D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser traveled to Delaware to celebrate Joe Bidens presidential win. The problem? Delaware was on her list of states considered high risk for COVID-19. She skirted the rules by insisting that attending Bidens victory party was essential travel. Right.

So traveling to spend her last Thanksgiving with your grandma makes you irresponsible and dangerous, but traveling to celebrate Bidens win is essential travel? You can go to a conference in Hawaii, but you cant schlep to Cleveland for a family reunion?

To the laymans eye, theres a lot of hypocrisy here. But why shouldnt progressive politicians enjoy these perks? They are our betters, arent they?

Excerpt from:
Gavin Newsom Is the Face of Privileged Liberal Hypocrisy - The Daily Beast