An Opportunity to Reimagine ECOWAS

With the inauguration of the newfangled Alliance of Sahel States (AES) in the Nigerien capital, Niamey, earlier this month, the breach between the main body of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the three dissident states of Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger would seem to be now irreparable. Back in September last year, and again in January this year, the three military-led states—much to the consternation of policymakers and analysts across the region—had signaled their intention to quit the body, claiming that it had “drifted from the ideals of its founding fathers and the spirit of Pan-Africanism.” Other charges brought against ECOWAS were that it had “fallen under the influence of foreign powers” and “become a threat to member states and peoples.” Furthermore, ECOWAS was accused of failing in its promise to help the three states put down an Islamist insurgency which had become intractable, putting them under tremendous political stress. 

If the summit in Niamey symbolizes a formalization of divorce by the three breakaway states (the leaders insisted that their announcement was “irrevocable and immediate”), ECOWAS, which held its own summit about the same time in Abuja, the Nigerian capital, seems determined to woo them back into the fold. Although he has previously said that he is “nobody’s mediator,” Senegalese President Bassirou Diomaye Faye, who met with the head of the Burkinabe junta Ibrahim Traore in Ouagadougou back in May and is of the same generation as two of the three renegade heads of state, is reportedly the regional body’s preference to play the role of peacemaker.      

But with chances of appeasement increasingly remote (the rhetoric coming out of the Niamey summit of AES was not conciliatory in the least), criticism of ECOWAS’ approach to the conflict has ramped up, with many blaming the regional body either for not doing enough to pacify the Sahelian troika, or outright alienating them by imposing sanctions on Niger in the aftermath of the July 2023 coup d’etat and insisting on a quick return to democracy in all three.  

Adama Gaye, a one-time Director of Communications of ECOWAS, is typical of this trend. Not only does he hold ECOWAS partly, if not wholly, responsible for the withdrawal of the AES countries by nagging them to hold free and fair elections, he wonders at the sense in doing so “when most of the other countries claiming to uphold that demand for democracy are not themselves true democracies.” Although he does not quite endorse the sentiment that the regional body is to be blamed for the AES states’ decision to initiate divorce, ECOWAS Commission President, Gambian diplomat Omar Alieu Touray, is no less apprehensive about the region’s prospects, fearing that it faces “the risk of disintegration and worsened insecurity,” a situation that he hopes can be reversed with “a more vigorous approach” on the part of ECOWAS. In the meantime, within Nigeria, a section of the commentariat has taken President Bola Tinubu, Chairman of the Community since July last year, to task for apparently “mismanaging” the response to the breakaway threat, and ipso facto the recent spate of coups d’etat in the region.    

To be clear, the exit of the AES countries (combined population seventy-two million) from ECOWAS—without question the most successful model of regional cooperation in Africa—is something to be regretted. As founding members, all three countries have been part of the furniture, and integral to key intra-regional trade, political and security initiatives for so long that it is difficult to envisage the body without them. ECOWAS is categorically better and stronger with than without them, and the body has done the right thing by continuing to send out feelers to the dissidents to make clear that the door is open for re-entry should any of them have a change of heart. 

That said, it cannot be emphasized enough that the AES countries cannot be allowed to hold the majority to ransom, which is what their threat to quit if they were not allowed to march to their own beat as military-headed regimes would seem to boil down to. While ECOWAS has been blamed for not doing enough to make the three countries feel wanted within the organization, it would appear, on the contrary, that it has bent over backwards to accommodate them, for instance lifting travel, commercial and economic sanctions even when there was hardly any guarantee of the rebellious troika offering anything by way of reciprocation.        

Indeed, not only did the AES states decline the olive branch, instructively, they have doubled down on their pugnacity. The summit in Niamey was a tacky spectacle of pseudo-populism, complete with a consistent stream of verbal vitriol directed by the military leaders at “neo-colonial" and “imperialist” Western powers (including their ECOWAS “proxies”) presumably scheming to strip the three countries of their hard-won sovereignty.  

If, then, there is no going back for the AES alliance, which on current evidence also seems determined to trade partnership with various Western countries for military and technical collaboration with Russia—so much for sovereignty—ECOWAS would seem to have no choice but to pick up the gauntlet that the alliance has thrown down. Although it should not vacate its current policy of leaving the door open for any of the three states retracing its steps and asking to rejoin, it must not yield on the basic demand that such a state must provide a blueprint for general election at the earliest opportunity with a view to a permanent transition to democracy. In other words, ECOWAS should seize the opportunity to redouble its commitment to democratic rule as a basic condition of membership, something that President Tinubu had incidentally spoken about upon his election as Chairman in July 2023.    

While it is admittedly incongruous that “most of the other countries claiming to uphold that demand for democracy are not themselves true democracies,” what matters is that they have embarked on the journey and, all things considered, can be said to be on the right path. This is a different situation from what the AES alliance members are demanding, which is a no limits concession to run their countries as military despots. From this standpoint, the notion that a peer country must meet the vague standard of a ‘true democracy’ before it can be deemed qualified to hold them to account is totally unrealistic. The onus is on those who hold ECOWAS responsible for the departure of the AES states to show what, under the circumstances, it could or should have done differently. 

Finally, those who are blaming ECOWAS for the withdrawal of the AES countries seem to be unmindful of the looming shadow of Russia, whose longstanding dual strategy has been to drive a wedge between ECOWAS as a way to extend and deepen its influence in the region while at the same time undercutting the West.  

The voice may be that of the AES alliance, but the hand is unmistakably Moscow’s.