This is the second of the three articles I am writing on ECOWAS – the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).
As I stated in the first article, to describe ECOWAS, which was formed in 1975 to foster the economic union of the West African sub-region, as a monumental failure would be guilty of inapt language. It is much worse.
As usual, I’d like you to read the articles, make your comments, and please try to share them.
When ECOWAS was born in 1975 with great fanfare and grand ambitions, its architects waxed lyrical about regional integration, economic cooperation, free movement of people and goods, and collective security.
ECOWAS was meant to be a bold step towards a prosperous and united West Africa – a regional powerhouse that would lift its people out of poverty and lessen or eradicate dependence on former colonial masters.
Very lofty objectives, no doubt, but fifty years later, what do we have but a monumental failure? A grotesque mockery of the hopes of millions of hopeful citizens. A club of visionless leaders who have reduced ECOWAS to a pathetic shell of itself, unable to protect its citizens, failing to ensure economic progress or regional integration, and even stooping to become an enforcer of Western interests.
What has ECOWAS done for ordinary West Africans? Nothing. I write this with the authority of a citizen who lives and travels across the region.
This organization, which should be a bulwark of regional sovereignty, has instead been reduced to an errand boy of France, the U.S., and the European Union.
Rather than lifting West Africans out of their economic, political, and security struggles, ECOWAS has been complicit in maintaining the status quo of underdevelopment, neocolonial subjugation, mass suffering, and normalization of poverty.
It is time for ECOWAS citizens to rise and ask the hard questions: Why does it exist if it cannot serve the people of West Africa? And what must be done to rescue it from the greedy, self-serving, reprobate elites who have hijacked it?
When the organization was born with the signing of the Lagos Treaty, it was supposed to be a turning point for West Africa. Its objectives were clear:
• Economic integration to promote self-reliance and reduce dependence on former colonial masters.
• Free movement of people and services across borders, ensuring West Africans could travel, trade, and work in any member state.
• Common infrastructure projects to develop roads, railways, and energy networks that would unite the region.
• Peace and security cooperation to prevent conflicts and promote stability.
These are, without doubt, excellent ideas that, if pursued, would have lifted the struggling out of the quagmire of underdevelopment. However, the sad reality is that ECOWAS has failed miserably on every single front.
• Instead of economic integration, our economies remain structurally dependent on the West, with little intra-regional trade.
• Instead of free movement, we have citizens harassed at border posts by corrupt officials demanding bribes. They do this openly and without shame. The Seme border in Nigeria is probably the world’s worst crossing point.
• Instead of regional infrastructure, we have roads riddled with potholes and barely functioning electricity grids. The misrulers lack the intelligence to build railways to solve the transportation problem of people and goods. While the EU has eliminated the criminal roaming charges by Telcos, West Africans continue to be ruthlessly exploited by foreign telecommunication companies.
• Instead of peace and security, we have ECOWAS watching helplessly as terrorism, kidnapping (predominantly in Nigeria), coups, and instability engulf the region.
Let us list some pressing challenges citizens face that ECOWAS leaders have failed to address despite countless meetings and communiques.
• Youth Unemployment: Millions of young West Africans, including university graduates, roam the streets jobless. Their governments have failed them. ECOWAS has failed them. And yet, the only “solution” they hear is to embark on dangerous migrations to Europe, where they are met with racism, exploitation, and sometimes death. West African leaders appear to be the only bunch who do not recognize or put any value on human talents.
• Economic Hardships: Despite being home to vast natural resources—gold in Mali, oil in Nigeria, cocoa in Côte d’Ivoire, bauxite in Ghana — West Africa remains one of the poorest regions in the world. The region’s wealth is siphoned off by corrupt elites who collude with Western corporations and foreign powers while ordinary people languish in poverty. Seven decades after ostensible independence, West African misrulers, proud heirs of neocolonialism, are content to sign minerals that normal nations would have rejected as insulting.
• Border Harassment: ECOWAS claims to promote free movement, yet West Africans are constantly humiliated at their borders. The level of extortion, bribery, and abuse at these checkpoints is shameful. Meanwhile, Asian, Arab, European, and American “investors” waltz through with ease.
• Security Failures: From Boko Haram in Nigeria to jihadist insurgencies in the Sahel, the West Africa sub-region is in turmoil. ECOWAS has not done anything of substance apart from issuing ritualistic empty condemnation letters after every massacre while France and the U.S. pretend to be “helping” with their military bases – bases that have only worsened the situation.
Allegations are rife that these foreign troops promote and support the insurgents and facilitate their looting of mineral resources.
West Africans are baffled at the speed at which the juntas in the AES that broke away from EOWAS were able to secure new agreements with foreign mining companies that were more favorable to their countries than what “democratic governments” signed.
• Political Instability: In just the past few years, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, and Guinea have all experienced military coups. Why? Because the so-called democratic governments were nothing but puppets of the West, looting their countries and neglecting their people. When these governments fell, ECOWAS didn’t ask, “Why were the people angry?”
Instead of addressing the root causes of the unrest, the misrulers in ECOWAS rushed to impose sanctions that only punished ordinary people. Nigeria’s president, Tinubu, appears to be leading the ECOWAS pack of faithful puppets of Western, especially French imperialism.
The contrast between ECOWAS and prosperous regional blocs like the European Union (EU) or the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is striking.
While these organizations have transformed their regions, ECOWAS has been reduced to an empty talk shop – a place where shameless and clueless leaders in flowing gowns gather to issue meaningless communiqués while their people suffer.
While ECOWAS wallows in failure, other regional blocs have made real progress.
• The EU: Despite all its travails, the European Union (EU) ensured genuine economic integration before Woke Ideologues hijacked its machinery. There is free movement of people, goods, services, and capital across member states. A German can work in Spain without harassment. A Frenchman can live in Portugal without discrimination. Those of us West Africans who travel to Europe can only wonder why we cannot enjoy the same privileges within our region.
• The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN): Once plagued by poverty and wars, Southeast Asia has used regional integration to drive industrialization and economic growth and has lifted millions out of poverty. Vietnam, Malaysia, and Indonesia have rapidly developed their economies through regional cooperation. Why can’t West Africa do the same?
• The Southern African Development Community (SADC): Even within Africa, SADC has been more effective in regional coordination than ECOWAS. Countries like South Africa, Botswana, and Namibia have shown better leadership in promoting economic growth and stability.
So, what is West Africa’s excuse? Why is ECOWAS lagging? The answer is simple: visionless leadership, corruption, and refusing to break free from neocolonial shackles.
Enough is enough. Enough of complacency; it is time for citizens to take their leaders to task and demand that their regional organization be taken more seriously and fundamental reforms be urgently implemented.
We have some suggestions:
1. Economic Self-Sufficiency: West African countries must stop relying on Western donors and neocolonial institutions like the IMF and World Bank. ECOWAS should lead efforts to industrialize, process raw materials locally, and trade within the region instead of exporting resources to Asia, Europe, and America.
2. Genuine Free Movement: The harassment of West Africans at borders must end. If ECOWAS is serious about integration, it must implement real policies that allow its citizens to travel, work, and do business freely across the region. ECOWAS must release citizens’ creativity and entrepreneurship, especially the youth.
3. A Regional Defense Force: Instead of relying on France and the U.S. for security, ECOWAS must develop its military capacity to deal with terrorism and instability. Foreign troops only serve their interests, not ours. Given the dastardly records of US troops worldwide, it is insulting to see AFRICOM dotting our countries with bases.
4. A Stronger and Independent ECOWAS Parliament: The ECOWAS Parliament must be given real legislative power rather than being a ceremonial body. Citizens must have a direct say in regional policies, and corrupt heads of state must not be allowed to hijack the organization.
5. Accountability and Leadership Change: West Africans must stop tolerating failed leadership. ECOWAS should establish mechanisms to hold leaders accountable and remove corrupt and incompetent presidents before they ruin their countries or the military steps in.
6. Harmonization of foreign trade policies: The organization must develop joint policies so that foreign corporations stop taking advantage of them. Elementary common sense should tell West African misrulers that, apart from Nigeria, none of the other colonial garrisons we euphemistically called countries could face an increasingly hostile world on their own. The presidents of, say, the Gambia would look utterly stupid to face behemoths like the US, China, or the EU in trade negotiations. They will have him for dessert.
7. Joint Telecommunication: West African citizens must be among the most exploited people in the world. It is insane that it is cheaper to call Europe and the USA than the neighboring country.
Prioritization of a rail link across ECOWAS. It is outrageous that after fifty years, West Africa remains unconnected by rail. Could all our leaders have been too blind to see the huge benefits that modern rail links would bring to the region? Can they not imagine the entire region’s massive transformation through increased movements of goods by hardworking citizens?
8. Most importantly, West Africans must wake up and raise their voices. In its current form, ECOWAS is a disgrace. It serves only the interests of corrupt politicians and their hangers-on, Western powers, and international financial institutions. It has abandoned the people it was meant to uplift from poverty.
If ECOWAS is to be saved, it must be reclaimed by the people and reformed to serve West Africans first, not France, the U.S., or the EU. We must tell the truth to those in power. We should let the pliant, neocolonial puppets in power know that enough is enough.
The choice is clear: we either help ECOWAS transform itself into a vehicle for regional progress, or it will become another relic of Africa’s wasted potential. The people must demand better, because no one will save West Africa except West Africans.
Our silence makes us complicit in the failure of our leaders and our institutions.
©️ Fẹ̀mi Akọ̀mọ̀làfẹ̀
(Farmer, Writer, Published Author, Essayist, Polemicist, Satirist, and Social Commentator.)
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