Dr Henry Olaonipekun Programme Advisor at Advanced Centre for Sustainable Development Nigeria has said that mutual suspicion among African states will never pave a way for sustainable development.
Dr Olaonipekun was speaking at the just ended a week long seminar on Cultural Diplomacy in Africa organized by the Institute for Cultural Diplomacy based in Berlin, Germany, which brought together a cross section of scholars academics, civil society journalist and diplomatic representatives is aimed cultural diplomacy as a tool in helping Africa to address the challenges it currently faces.

However, the forum looked at thematic areas like international and regional economic integration, china-Africa relation among other key factors affecting Africa’s growth.

He argued that African leaders pretend to be concern about global politics when within they cannot stand out to have a common idea that can stand out for the world to see that the Africa is a serious region.
‘Under the internal, social and economic integration there are key points we cannot scarifies, if Africa is coming together to bring about a common front then something need to happen internally in African we have several differences, dichotomies we talk about languages, cultures and other values that are basic in cooperation they are lacking in Africa and without all these in place it may be very difficult to tell what exactly do we need to do in bringing about the cooperation that is require for Africa to move forward,’’ He stated.

He lamented that ‘if mercenaries are not coming from outside Africa destructive mercenaries are raised within us to fight against ourselves, we know how much it cost to, organize an extraordinary to travel from all over African countries those in the affairs that manage the resources that money might by their own assessment think is a small money but pool everything together it can solve one African problem wasted on extraordinary submit.’’


Dr Olaonipekun express his dismay in the shuttle fight, politics and diplomacy that went between Nigeria and south and some other African countries in the process of bringing Nigeria to the UN Security Council

‘we cannot come together and say to the world that this is our candidate without playing dirty international politics it is unfortunate for the new partnership for Africa what story are we to tell about the partnership we are in partnership we cannot present a common and a consensus candidate to represent us at the UN security council,’’ he concluded.