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ABUJA, July 24 (AFP) - Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo has urged African nations to work hard to prove sceptics wrong on the workability of the recently established African Union, an official statement said Wednesday.

Receiving late Tuesday a special envoy from Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, the Nigerian leader said that Africans must take continental integration "as a project for which there is no alternative".

"There are of course cynics and sceptics who believe that a successful union of our 53 different countries is unrealistic and impossible, but we ourselves must not look at the African Union cynically or with scepticism," he told the envoy, Feyza Abou El-Naga.

He expressed the belief that with Algeria, Egypt, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa and other major countries in each of the continent's regions serving as its driving force, the African Union should work, the statement said.

"The New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD) is a programme that can underpin the Union and move Africa forward economically, politically and socially," he told El-Naga, who is the Egyptian minister of state for foreign affairs.

In his message to Obasanjo, Mubarak, who was absent at the formal launch of the African Union earlier this month in Durban, South Africa, expressed his full support for the goals for the Union, the statement said. -Nampa-AFP

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