ECOWAS: A manner ahead | The Guardian Nigeria News
Just just like the 27-nation robust, European Union, the underlying thesis for rapprochement within the disaster confronting the 15-nation regional bloc of sovereign nations: Benin, Burkina Faso, Cabo Verde, Cote d’Ivoire, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Togo. The disaster was triggered by the ECOWAS choice to droop Burkina Faso, on January 28, 2022; Mali, on May 30, 2021; and Niger, on December 10, 2023 following the overthrow of democratically elected civilian governments in these nations. Guinea, was earlier suspended on September 8, 2021, for a similar motive: toppling the elected civilian administration.
Arguably probably the most important strategic problem confronting the regional bloc since its inception on May 28, 1975, the trinity of Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, exiting ECOWAS, issuing an incendiary joint assertion to that impact on January 28, 2024, asserting that that they’d “decided in complete sovereignty, on the immediate withdrawal of Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger from ECOWAS”; “ECOWAS, under the influence of foreign powers, betraying its founding principles, has become a threat to its Member States and its populations whose happiness it is supposed to ensure.”
Whilst pragmatic democracy, actually affords the individuals the selection of who leads them, civic participation, constitutional governance, moral management, the rule of legislation, respect for human rights in progressive societies; and that constructive engagement, realpolitik, efficient diplomacy certainly have to be the best way ahead upon a wise steadiness of the competing dangers and advantages of partaking the divergent (Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger) states; not least as a result of on the regional safety criterion, not a single ECOWAS member state might, singularly, “conquer the cascading scourge of extremist terrorism ravaging the region.”
Therefore, ECOWAS, wanted to collaborate successfully by sharing intelligence, executing kinetic and non-kinetic operations, disrupting terrorist financing and weapons procurement mechanisms, and imposing more durable immigration controls. Advancing the argument, collaboration amongst Member States was, and stays, pivotal to tackling the antagonistic penalties of local weather change, desertification, environmental degradation; the steadiness of sovereign management of mineral sources and shaping mutually-beneficial financial methods to alleviate poverty, enhance training and well being outcomes; which might solely be achieved by way of efficient rapprochement.
On that premise, is the placing import of the adage of the Yoruba individuals of Nigeria, the West African sub-region, Brazil, Cuba et al: agba kii wa loja, kii ori ómótun tun wóó. Loosely translated, it signifies that a accountable elder, will all the time act to avoid wasting the lifetime of an unwell little one. In the context of this discourse, the unwell little one is clearly ECOWAS, and the Elder Statesman who stepped in, because it have been, to rescue the day, was the Sandhurst-trained (Rtd) General Yakubu Gowon.
General Gowon, was Nigeria’s army chief by way of 1966-1975 and is the only real surviving founding chief of ECOWAS. On February 13, 2024, he, fairly unusually, wrote an impassioned open letter to all ECOWAS Heads of States calling on them to right away think about: “1.) Lifting all sanctions that have been imposed on Burkina Faso, Guinea, Mali and Niger; 2.) Withdrawal by Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger of their notices to leave ECOWAS; and 3.) Participation of all 15 ECOWAS heads of state in a summit to discuss the future of the community, regional security and stability, as well as the role of the international community given the current geopolitical context…”
Less than a fortnight in a while February 24, 2024, ECOWAS, beneath the Chairmanship of Nigeria’s President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, convened an Extraordinary Summit. The key resolutions of which have been the lifting of sanctions pertaining to: the closure of land and air borders, the moratorium on business, service and utility transactions; imposition of no flight zones between ECOWAS and Niger Republic. Plus, in an environment of pragmatic rapprochement, Burkina Faso, Guinea, Mali and Niger, have been invited to attend necessary ECOWAS safety conferences.
These seminal and risky dynamics set up necessary ideas in realpolitik throughout the African geopolitical context. First, proactive civic participation by elder statesmen, attorneys and the fourth property of the realm, an everlasting vigilant press, is pivotal in strategic coverage improvement typically and, on this context, regional/overseas coverage improvement and nuanced realignment.
Second, ECOWAS, was in a position to obtain the numerous thaw in icy relations between ECOWAS, Guinea and the trinity of Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, with out resorting to the European Union, the UN Security Council, NATO and others. Thereby, making use of the communalism doctrine, and reflecting Africa’s capability to unravel African issues pragmatically.
Third, because the adage goes, there may be power in numbers. The virulent safety challenges confronting the West African sub-region calls for efficient collaboration and coordination and strategic synergies are important. This proposition is strengthened, partly, by the relative success of the ECOWAS Monitoring Group (ECOMOG), a regional multilateral defence initiative, which helped to facilitate ending the Liberian Civil War (1989-1997), and containing conflicts in Sierra Leone and Guinea Bissau, in 1997 and 1999, respectively.
Fourth, the authorized and ethical imperatives of elected democratic orthodoxies throughout ECOWAS States are actually virtuous aspirations. Indeed, Article 4 (Fundamental Principles) (c), (j) of the Revised Ecowas Treaty of July 24, 1993 enunciates that: Member States “solemnly affirm and declare their adherence to the following principles…inter-State co-operation, harmonisation of policies and integration of programmes”; and the “promotion and consolidation of a democratic system of governance in each Member State.”
And, Article 58 (2) (g) of the revised ECOWAS Treaty, stipulates that Member States “undertake to cooperate with the Community in establishing, and strengthening appropriate mechanisms for the timely prevention and resolution of intra-State and inter-State conflicts…provide where necessary; and, at the request of Member States, assistance to Member States for the observation of democratic elections….”
Nevertheless, the extant ECOWAS disaster, and rapprochement, by logical inference, re-establishes the precept that every Member State has the liberty to find out its purposeful governance modus operandi. The query of whether or not a authorities assumed energy via a clear participatory democratic order, or, through vaunted “reformist” army dictatorship, is now, successfully, a facet concern within the ECOWAS context! That mentioned, there stays a lingering query as to what, if any, precedential parameters are established by this dynamic, throughout ECOWAS states. Food for thought for all!
Fifth, though ECOWAS imposed sanctions towards the quartet of Burkina Faso, Guinea, Mali, and Niger, the sensible results have been unclear. Because, the proof means that financial sanctions towards pariah regimes are hardly efficient if the precedents of the UN arms embargo towards apartheid South Africa in 1963 are something to go by. That embargo did little to impede South Africa’s formidable army build-up. Plus, many years of American financial embargoes towards Cuba’s Fidel Castro (1926-2016), did little to cripple that nation’s economic system. More just lately, the mixed results of American and European sanctions have accomplished little to imperil Russia’s warfare towards Ukraine which started on February 24, 2022.
Finally, de facto ECOWAS rapprochement with the Guinea and the triad of Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, though removed from good, is actually a nuanced strategic victory for constructive engagement, efficient mediation, pragmatism and good politics, particularly given the distinctive regional geopolitical context.
As Winston Churchill intoned, “courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.” On this event, ECOWAS leaders have acted courageously by listening to the voices of motive and reversing its earlier sanctions on the quartet of Burkina Faso, Guinea, Mali and Niger within the overriding pursuits of regional cooperation, peaceable coexistence and reconciliation. It is a welcome improvement which different hassle spots around the globe might actually study from.
Certainly, ECOWAS formally permitted the exit of Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso from the bloc on December 15, 2024, nevertheless, these nations nonetheless have the chance to rethink.
An necessary lesson is gained from Greek mythology, asserted partly, beneath the company of Aesop’s fable of the “Bundle of Sticks”: it reinforces the facility of unity. Independently, a stick could also be fragile and limp, nevertheless, brigaded, they kind a strong important mass.
Ojumu is the Principal Partner at Balliol Myers LP, a agency of authorized practitioners and technique consultants in Lagos, Nigeria, and the creator of The Dynamic Intersections of Economics, Foreign Relations, Jurisprudence and National Development
