ECOWAS: As Tinubu’s first tenure ends, By Olu Jacobs

ECOWAS Heads of State in Abuja (PHOTO CREDIT: ECOWAS Facebook page.)

In its initial response, ECOWAS under its new Chairman, who had promised to give no quarter to coupists, was decisive, giving the junta all of seven days to step down and return Bazoum to power. Tinubu’s anger was palpable, as was his concern that another coup in the Sahel could cause a domino effect. “They cannot use the gun given to them to protect the sovereignty of the country and turn it against the people of the country,” he pointed out.

There is a viral video of the Ghanaian President, Nana Akufo-Addo, arriving the Ouagadougou airport and being given a cold shoulder by Burkinabe ministers in the presence of their leader, Ibrahim Traore.

The video supposedly illustrates the crisis within the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) since the Sahelian coups and the series of sanctions slammed on the coupists, leading to the famous declaration by Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso in January that they would be leaving the regional body to form their own fringe group instead.

The real story behind the video, however, had less to do with ECOWAS and more to do with the comment the Ghanaian President made over the alleged flirtation of Burkina Faso with Russian mercenaries, and the implication for the war on terror in the region.

Still, the last one year has tested the unity of the regional group more than any other period in its nearly fifty years of chequered growth.

By the time President Bola Ahmed Tinubu was handed the reigns in July 2023 at the 63rd ordinary session of the ECOWAS Authority of Heads of State and Government in Bissau, Guinea-Bissau, barely two months after he won a fiercely contested election in Nigeria, the ECOWAS community was facing dire crisis. Three member states, Mali, Burkina Faso and Guinea had seen five coups in three years. Mali was moreover beset by a jihadist insurgency across some of its 4,500 miles of porous borders and the violence had spread to Guinea and Burkina Faso, so that “the Sahel region now ranks as the world’s epicenter of terrorism,” according to the Global Terrorism Index.

Drought had also led to famine in these landlocked states and the millions of displaced persons presented an impossible refugee crisis.

In his very first speech as ECOWAS Chairman, replacing the host country’s Umaro Sissoco Embalo, President Tinubu acknowledged that democracy had not been as successful as it should be in the region but said it remained, “the best form of government,” despite “being tough to manage.”

Flush from his own victory in Nigeria’s redoubtable presidential polls, he gushed that the region would set an example for the rest of Africa, and the world. “We will not allow coup after coup in West Africa,” he warned. Almost as if on cue, two weeks later, a coup led by General Abdourahmane Tchiani toppled the government of Mohamed Bazoum in Niger and thus began a firestorm of events that came to define the first tenure of President Bola Tinubu as chair of the regional body.

In its initial response, ECOWAS under its new Chairman, who had promised to give no quarter to coupists, was decisive, giving the junta all of seven days to step down and return Bazoum to power. Tinubu’s anger was palpable, as was his concern that another coup in the Sahel could cause a domino effect. “They cannot use the gun given to them to protect the sovereignty of the country and turn it against the people of the country,” he pointed out.

Tinubu received justifiable praise for his stern stance. The African Union, European Union, United States government and the international community gave him unalloyed support. As the German ambassador to Nigeria, Annett Gunter said recently, “President Tinubu had made it clear that ECOWAS will not tolerate such actions and I think that is the right approach. Democracy is a fundamental principle of ECOWAS and it is essential to uphold it.”

So, ECOWAS imposed severe sanctions on Niger and the Authority of Heads of State threatened to use force to eject the soldiers, as enshrined in the Community’s 2001 Protocol on Democracy and Good Governance.

Tinubu received justifiable praise for his stern stance. The African Union, European Union, United States government and the international community gave him unalloyed support. As the German ambassador to Nigeria, Annett Gunter said recently, “President Tinubu had made it clear that ECOWAS will not tolerate such actions and I think that is the right approach. Democracy is a fundamental principle of ECOWAS and it is essential to uphold it.”

Soon after, however, things got complicated. The sanctions, as sanctions are wont to do, were hurting the people of Niger more than their targeted leaders.

Food security worsened, inflation skyrocketed, and the border closure with Nigeria, particularly along Maradi and some half a dozen states in northern Nigeria, shut down the roughly $500 million annual trade in transport, electricity, tobacco, cement, livestock-derived products, fruits and refined petroleum between both nations.

Beyond the sanctions, ECOWAS’ plan to activate the deployment of its “Standby force with all its elements” didn’t sit well with many, who said a war in the region, with its attendant refugee problems, would do more harm than good.

Crucially, the historical affinity between the people of northern Nigeria and Niger Republic also ensured that any thought of killing “our brothers across the border” would get no traction with a sizeable portion of the country. In the end, the plan was shelved, and in February the sanctions were lifted, “with immediate effect,” according to the president of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Commission, Omar Alieu Touray, who said the decision was based “on purely humanitarian grounds,” to ease the suffering of Nigeriens.

At the summit, President Tinubu said ECOWAS “must re-examine our current approach to the quest for constitutional order in four of our Member States” and urged Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso to “reconsider their decision” to withdraw from the body and “not perceive our organisation as the enemy.”

The decision all but saved ECOWAS from further fragmentation. By dialing back, Tinubu proved to be a leader sensitive to the mood of the people. Still, critics worried that the decision to halt military intervention made ECOWAS look weak, but whenever it becomes necessary to kill people in order to prove your power over them, you have already lost.

…there WAs the powerful role that ECOWAS played under the leadership of President Bola Tinubu, in the success of the Senegalese election of 24 March. Following the riots and mayhem that attended the initial postponement of the polls, ECOWAS swiftly took a series of actions to avert disaster. The Chairman had issued strong statements assuring the people of Senegal that ECOWAS stands with them in their quest for a successful transition.

On the sideline of the election in Senegal, the ECOWAS Commissioner for Political Affairs, Peace and Security, Ambassador Abdel-Fatau Musah, told me that ECOWAS never planned to actually invade Niger anyway. “We haven’t really done that in a long while,” he said. “It was always going to be a last resort.”

In many ways, the political option has been given teeth since Tinubu came to office. Reportedly, under the mandate of the Nigerian Chairman, a number of crises have been averted with his deft interventions. On 23 December 2023, he sent a high-powered mission led by Ghana’s President Nana Akufo-Addo and Macky Sall of Senegal to negotiate the relocation of former Sierra Leone President, Ernest Bai Koroma, who was charged for treason in connection with a failed coup, to Nigeria. The matter had threatened to engulf the country in another conflagration until Tinubu’s carrot-and-stick approach led to an agreement that saw the former president flown to live in Nigeria on 4 January.

Then there was the powerful role that ECOWAS played under the leadership of President Bola Tinubu, in the success of the Senegalese election of 24 March. Following the riots and mayhem that attended the initial postponement of the polls, ECOWAS swiftly took a series of actions to avert disaster. The Chairman had issued strong statements assuring the people of Senegal that ECOWAS stands with them in their quest for a successful transition. He then deployed a fact-finding mission to interrogate the electoral process and meet with stakeholders; sent in long term observer groups; and assembled a 130-member mission under Ambassador Ibrahim Gambari, which arrived Dakar, Senegal to witness the polls and dialogue with the then president, Macky Sall, civil society groups and leading candidates in the election.

Tinubu who praised the conduct of the polls said the success of the Senegal election was proof that democracy remains the popular choice of the region and military rule is an abhorrent aberration.

Also, under Tinubu’s leadership, ECOWAS has speeded up the process of reducing the cost of elections in the region, capping campaign finances, and establishing a logistic depot to produce ballot boxes and other generic election materials to aid nations holding elections. It has also deployed a mission to Ghana, which goes to the polls at the end of the year, to discover anything that may hinder that nation from having a hitch-free election.

It is interesting that Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, who in his inaugural speech as Nigeria’s president promised to retool Nigeria’s foreign policy to more actively lead the regional and continental quest for collective prosperity, has managed to use his chairmanship of the regional body to achieve his foreign policy mandate. His famous 4D doctrine, “which is anchored on Democracy, Development, Demography and Diaspora” seemed to have aligned with his core mandate at ECOWAS, as captured in his maiden speech as Chairman: “I make a pledge here that in furtherance of our region’s economic recovery and growth we will commit to democracy and promote democracy and the rule of law…we will work collectively to pursue inclusive economic integration of the sub-region.”

As ECOWAS continues to engage with the juntas in Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso and Guinea, it must also look at the way some democracies in the region tinker with their nations constitution to give their leaders third terms or confer undue advantages on the ruling party. By employing its peer review mechanism to sanction the excesses of their colleagues, the Authority of Heads of States will further demonstrate the impact of ECOWAS and bring the Community closer to the grassroots, assuring the citizens that the body cares for their wellbeing.

As Tinubu has noted in the past, it is by “providing good governance that tackles the challenges of poverty, inequality and other concerns of the people that we would succeed in addressing some of the root causes of military intervention in some of the civilian processes in our region.”

Olu Jacobs, a former newspaper editor, wrote in from Abuja.