Government Questions and Answers

The state has four essential attributes, Population, Territory, Government, and Sovereignty. Population and territory constitute the physical basis of the State while government and sovereignty constitute its legal basis or political basis. sovereignty means the supreme power of a state

One very unique feature of a state is the fact that it has the supreme power to make decisions and enforce the same on the people.

Each member state is represented on the Board of Governors of OPEC for a period of 2 years.

Representatives of member states make up this body called Board of Governors. A representative is referred to as Governor.

Each Governor has only one vote and stays for a term of two years. The Board meets two times a year. The administration of OPEC is in the hands of this organ.

The organ of the United Nations responsible for the approval of its annual budget is the General Assembly. General Assembly is composed of Representatives of all the members of nations of the organization. It normally meets once a year for about three months between September and December.

Some of the functions are as follows:
1. It is the principal organ of the organization
2. It discusses matters concerning the world peace and security, then passes resolutions which are recommended to the Security Council.
3. It discusses and approves annual budget of the organization prepared by the Secretariat.
4. It approves the appointment of the Secretary General of the United Nations
5. It admits new members into the organization, etc.

The League of Nations was the international organization which was in existence before the second world war.

After the First World War which took place from 1914 - 1918, the League of Nations was formed to prevent the occurrence of further wars in the world. The League of Nations was weak and could not prevent the second world war 1939-1945.

Togo was the country which pioneered the idea of ECOWAS alongside Nigeria.

The origin of ECOWAS can be traced to the 1972 when Nigeria's Head of State by then, General Yakubu Gowon and the President of Togo, Gnassingbe Eyadema, had so many meetings about the importance of forming an economic organization for West African States. At last they succeeded to convince other West African leaders about the need to have an economic union. The efforts of these two West African heads of states respectively were rewarded with success when 15 heads of state and government in West Africa came together in Lagos, the capital of Nigeria on 28th May, 1975 and signed the 65-article ECOWAS Treaty.