In the aftermath of the announcement on January 28, 2024 by Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger Republic denouncing the Revised Treaty of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and leaving the regional bloc “without delay”, reactions spanned the spectrum from hubris to hyperbole.
From Nigeria, the regional anchor and chair of the Community, the predominant sentiment was: “the three countries would have more to lose.” Outside the continent, some described the scenario as “West Africa’s ‘Brexit’ moment” or Sahel exit, likening it to Britain’s resolution in 2016 to give up the European Union.
Reinforcing the comparability, the finalisation this previous week of the exit of the three nations from ECOWAS coincided with the fifth anniversary of the United Kingdom’s exit from the EU. The temptation to learn an excessive amount of into this coincidence must be resisted.
It is critical that the announcement by the three ECOWAS frontier states in 2024 was made shortly after the arrival in France of Nigeria’s President Bola Tinubu for what was stated to be a “private visit.” All three nations have been concerned in a plurinational dispute involving each Nigeria and France and linked with navy rule and transitions to elected authorities.
In actuality, nevertheless, the disputes have been extra about historic legacies of French colonial rule, the complicated insecurity within the Sahel, and Nigeria’s regional position. In reference to this, the joint assertion by the three nations accused ECOWAS of being “under the influence of foreign powers and betraying its founding principles.”
These weren’t allegations to be handled frivolously. There was additionally significance to the truth that the announcement got here on the eve of ECOWAS’ golden jubilee 12 months and represented the newest escalation in what’s actually a debate about learn how to calibrate inter-state relations in an more and more complicated regional setting.
It didn’t have to finish this fashion. As a matter of legislation and however the peremptory language deployed, the departure declaration by Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger in 2024 denouncing the ECOWAS Treaty was not speedy. Article 91(1) of the Revised ECOWAS Treaty requires departing nations to “give to the Executive Secretary one year’s notice in writing” and their departure can solely take impact on the finish of the interval.
ECOWAS had each alternative throughout this era to exert itself to point out it desired a special consequence. In the top, the Community appeared manifestly incapable of sustaining two contradictory concepts. One is the strategic significance of fine neighbourliness inside ECOWAS as a regional neighborhood of sovereign friends; the opposite is the dedication to authorities based on democratic legitimacy.
The undeniable fact that ECOWAS finds itself within the present predicament ostensibly over the destiny elective authorities within the area is considerably perverse acknowledgement of how far it has superior since its origins.
Of the 15 heads of state and authorities current on the adoption of the Treaty of the Economic Community of West African States in May 1975, seven have been navy rulers and one other six have been succeeded by troopers. Felix Houphöuet-Boigny of Côte d’Ivoire was the one president as such among the many unique signatories who was neither a soldier nor instantly succeeded by one however his successor was toppled by the navy in December 1999. Abdou Diouf, who represented Senegal on the adoption of the treaty was then Prime Minister to President Leopold Senghor, whom he later succeeded as president on April 1, 1981.
Cape Verde and Senegal are, due to this fact, the one ECOWAS nations to have been spared the expertise of navy rule. This reality ought to ordinarily have outfitted the Community and its member states with enough expertise in reacting to navy coups. However, it will be a mistake to suppose this denouement is the results of an argument over coups alone or largely.
ECOWAS started life in the midst of the worldwide vitality disaster of the Seventies, based by rulers who declared it as their purpose to “foster and accelerate the economic and social development of our States in order to improve the living standards of our peoples.” A mixture of misrule and debt overhang miscarried this goal even earlier than the ink was dry on the parchment on which it was written.
In the wake of instability that adopted, the neighborhood adjusted its mission in 1981 to incorporate mutual defence and safety, importing an implicit obligation of regional solidarity. When the Mano River nations, first Liberia after which Sierra Leone, descended into warfare from 1989, Nigeria, then led by navy ruler, Ibrahim Babangida, launched a regional intervention generally known as ECOWAS Monitoring Group (ECOMOG) in 1990.
A evaluate of the unique ECOWAS Treaty adopted in 1993, chaired by Nigeria’s former navy ruler, Yakubu Gowon, himself the prime mover behind the unique ECOWAS imaginative and prescient. The Revised ECOWAS Treaty once more enhanced the obligations of mutual solidarity among the many nations of the sub-region.
As the anchor nation in ECOWAS, Nigeria was naturally anticipated to bear a lot of the burden of financing this obligation. But a straitened economic system on the finish of a long time of misrule have pissed off that functionality on the a part of Nigeria at exactly the time that the nations of the Sahel wanted its presence probably the most in response to Islamist insurgencies.
The ensuing vacuum has been stuffed by exterior actors. The French proved to be their very own worst enemies of their try and fill this vacuum, offering the troopers who’ve seized energy in these nations with a standard foil. French departure in November 2022 and regional isolation by ECOWAS have proved to be a boon to Russia, which has shortly constructed up property and relations with the regimes in Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger.
Notionally, the departure of those three nations will value ECOWAS 54.35 per cent of its landmass, 20 per cent of its sovereign membership, 16.5 per cent of its inhabitants and 7 per cent of its GDP. The precise prices are incalculable. First, Mali and Niger have been historic buffers between the violence of the Sahel and the Maghreb on the one hand and the coastal states of the Gulf of Guinea on the opposite. Their departure might create new safety exposures.
Second, the casual economies of West Africa rely considerably on these nations. Trade, migration and pilgrimage routes traverse by way of them and the affect on the poor and the excluded who depend on these casual routes might both show to be prohibitive or show that our inter-state borders are hole in legitimacy and that means within the lives of unusual individuals.
Third, these nations are vital for civil aviation in West Africa for overflights. If they have been to disclaim these, ticketing and routing into their southern neighbours might additionally grow to be prohibitive.
The upshot is that, in a area outlined by notoriously porous borders and transnational communities, severing ties might be simpler stated than completed. Even now, there’s nonetheless motive not to surrender hope: Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger retain their membership of the CFA Franc Zone within the UEMOA, 5 of whose members stay within the ECOWAS.
ECOWAS has put a courageous face on its diminution, claiming that its institutional doorways stay open to those nations however their Alliance of Sahel States (AES) is up and operating. The feeling stays inescapable that this consequence was not foregone and that it has been enabled by high-level ineptitude among the many management of ECOWAS.
Ghana’s new President, John Mahama, has in a sensible method made it a precedence to advance rapprochement with the AES nations, appointing a private envoy to steer this course of. The Community ought to totally assist him.
It is not possible to not ponder what might need been. Over the previous 12 months whereas the imminence of those losses escalated, Nigeria’s President and Chairperson of ECOWAS, Bola Tinubu, has been to France on quite a few events.
Consider what might need been if he discovered time to interact and personally go to these West African neighbours? Surely, that was a mission match for a brand new presidential jet.
Odinkalu, a lawyer and trainer, might be reached at [email protected]
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