Before I present my brief statement, permit me to congratulate you and other Members of the Bureau for your election to direct the affairs of this Council at this Session for the next one year. We wish you well. The Secretariat deserves commendation for the very good arrangement put in place for this meeting. Let me also take this opportunity to place on record my delegation's appreciation for the honour done to my country, Nigeria, inviting our President Olusegun Obasanjo to deliver the keynote address at this Session of the Governing Council. We are also most appreciative of the appointment of a distinguished Nigerian technocrat, Mr. Cyril Enweze, to the exalted position of Vice-President of IFAD. I am confident that Mr. Enweze will live up to the collective expectation of Member States and amply justify the confidence reposed in him by IFAD Management.

This Council Session has several unique features which we should all endeavour to exploit in our collective strive to further enhance the effectiveness of our advocacy for the rural poor. First, this is the first Council Session organized under the leadership and guidance of the new President of IFAD, Mr Lennart Båge. The innovation introduced for the handling of business of the Session will no doubt afford the governing body a rare opportunity to dialogue decisively on the main issue at hand, the war against poverty in general, and rural poverty in particular. The management of IFAD and in particular the chief executive deserves unreserved commendation for this laudable initiative. My delegation wishes the new President as well a very good and successful tenure.

Secondly, the choice of a specific theme to guide our deliberations during our two-day interaction will no doubt help keep our discourse on subject matter in sharp focus and also help us draw conclusions that will send a strong message to the international community and at the highest level.

Thirdly, this Session is being held on the eve of an all-important global event, the forthcoming Conference on Financing for Development which has special significance to the developing world in general and in particular to the largely marginalized rural majority of the world's population.

My delegation hopes that our meeting will come up with an appropriate resolution that will further strengthen the case to be presented by IFAD to the international community at that conference, and this wise decision of the Council is indeed well timed. Let us all endeavour to maximize the advantage.

Fourthly, the Session is being held at a time when the issue of poverty reduction and rural development appears to have captured the attention of the international community more than it ever had in human history, at least going by the number of high profile international fora at which this subject was a major agenda in the recent past. The global mood would therefore seem to be favourably disposed to our theme and I therefore call on fellow governors to be forthright in our discussion, bearing in mind that we may not have such a favourable dispositional mood coming our way in the very near future.

The issue at stake is no longer that of strategizing on how to sensitize the international community on the plight of the rural poor; we have gone beyond that because the awareness is now well established. The main issues that should concern us in the meeting in my view are: the need to accept the view that rural poverty alleviation and rural development in a comprehensive sense constitute the cornerstone of truly sustainable human development. The urgent need to free the debtor nations of the developing world from the shackling yoke of choking external debt in order to set these countries on the path of true economic recovery. The urgent need for the developed countries to seriously address the issue of export subsidy as well as tariff and non-tariff barriers to agricultural trade in order to truly and fully integrate the developing world into the globalized free market economy and thereby break the vicious circle of poverty. The urgent need to mobilize resources, both domestic and international and both public and private to combat rural poverty, the increasingly widening gap between the rural poor and the powerful urban elite, a development which invariably leads to social discontent, urban congestion, social tension and ultimately even to social disintegration. How IFAD with its eminent comparative advantage can be further supported and strengthen the international community and national governments to continue to play its catalytic and advocacy roles in our collective global effort to combat rural poverty.

These are the challenges that we all face. My delegation hopes that these issues will be fully deliberated upon alongside with other considerations in the course of the next two days. Having had the privilege of my Head of State, President Obansanjo, being present and giving the keynote address on the theme of this Council Session, my delegation does not intend to make any long speech at the Plenary. But, before I conclude, I want to thank the President of IFAD, Mr Båge and all Council Members for the honour done to us by inviting our President and also the appointment of a Nigerian as the Vice-President of IFAD. We assure you that he will discharge his responsibilities and will live up to our expectations. I thank you.