ECOWAS: Divergence and rapprochement

The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) is a 15-bloc regional grouping of independent nations, comprising Benin, Burkina Faso, Cabo Verde, Cote d’Ivoire, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Togo.

By its explicit nomenclature, ECOWAS is first and foremost an economic union. It does not explicitly say the Political Community of West African States (PCOWAS). Therefore, the philosophical basis of the union, upon the criterion of that self-evident characterisation,is economics, not politics.

The logical distillation emanating from that proposition is that ECOWAS Member States must respect the sovereignty, internal affairs and mode of governance of which constituent each country. Authority for this formulation is established via Article 2, section 1, of the original ECOWAS Treaty 1975. provides that “it shall be the aim of the Community to promote co-operation and development in all fields of economic activity…for the purpose of raising the standard of living of its peoples, of increasing and maintaining economic stability…”

To frame this in perspective, the European Union, established pursuant to the Maastricht Treaty 1992, itself with origins in the European Economic Community (EEC), established via the Treaty of Rome 1957; was the template upon which ECOWAS was modelled at its inception in 1975.

That is, the underpinning logic was economics; not interference in the sovereignty of independent states! Thus, the conflation,and harmonisation,of economic, environmental, jurisprudential, political, and by extension, perceived interferencein the sovereignty of independent states; was one germane reason for Britain’s decision to exit the European Union of 27 states, following a robustly contested referendum in June 2016.

Advancing that logic, if country A, is administered by a military dictatorship, in plain terms, it is not the business of country B or any other ECOWAS country. That is one hypothesis: the divergent school of thought.

The conceptual anti-thesis queries the value of an ECOWAS, solely, as an economic union. In other words, ECOWAS is entirely pointless if it is not an economically, and politically integrated union, relative to legitimate aspirations: for transparent accountability, democratic governance, civic leadership and participation in governance; economic growth, the application of, and the respect for, the rule of law in name and in fact, separation of powers between the executive, legislative and judicial arms of government; adaptability to dynamic positive geopolitical trends, respect for human rights and a genuinely free press.

This proposition is crystallised in statute, pursuant to paragraphs (c), and (j), Article 4 (Fundamental Principles) of the Revised ECOWAS Treaty of July 24, 1993, which establish 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.”

Plus, 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…”

By virtue of these provisions, pan-regional economic and political policy harmonisation, and the active promotion of democratic norms and practices are, in principle, synchronised. The logical inference therefore is that military dictatorships are entirely antithetical to the fundamental objectives of ECOWAS, since 1993, which is clearly not just an economic union, but, importantly, an economic and politically wedded union. This is the integrationist school of thought.

Now then, written declarations, protocols, and statutes agreed by, and between, ECOWAS Member States are one thing; the observance of those instruments, protocols and statutes, are, of an entirely opposite order. In other words, there is a dynamic tension between the ‘divergent’ and ‘integrationist’ schools of thought which are, in fact, being played out in the extant debacle between ECOWAS Member States, of the integrationist philosophical leaning, Nigeria, Ghana, Liberia, Togo, Gambia, Capo Verde etc, versus those of the divergent school of thought, specifically: Burkina Faso, Niger and Mali.

The latter three countries are now ruled by military dictatorships, having toppled democratically elected civilian administrations; in the process, violating the letter, and spirit, of the revised ECOWAS Treaty and quit ECOWAS pursuant to a joint statement issued on January 28, 2024.

The military dictatorships affirmed that they have “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.”

This immediately surfaces deep and far-reaching schisms across ECOWAS. Should it ignore its own revised 1993 Treaty provisions on the “promotion and consolidation of a democratic system of governance in each Member State”, and look supine?

Does ECOWAS return to its original raison d’etre as an economic, as contradistinguished from a political union, as outlined in the ECOWAS 1975 Treaty? Is ECOWAS really in any true position to lecture Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger “the divergents” on the demerits of military dictatorships given Member States’ own political antecedents, steeped in decades of military rule?

Strictly in relation to the divergents, is the choice between a democratic rule and military dictatorships entirely binary? Does it follow that democratic rule is necessarily transcendent, and military regime axiomatically anarchic? How, in proximate terms, might global super powers be influencing the current ECOWAS crisis? What is the prognosis for an enduring reapprochement?

These are all complex posers and no singular response will be perfect nor entirely risk-free. For a start, the divergent states of Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger are sovereign nations and will act according to what they respectively perceive to be in their own subjectively defined national interests.

No one can compel them to alter their course of military dictatorship without a fight on the following pertinent grounds. First, Nigeria, Ghana, Liberia, Togo and other ECOWAS countries have military dictatorships steeped in their political antecedents and therefore lack the moral justification to dictate to the divergent, albeit sovereign countries, how to run their internal affairs.

Second, global super powers, the United States, Russia, China, United Kingdom, and by extension, the wider international community, work with political administrations in ECOWAS, and elsewhere, which align with their own strategic national interests.

Thus, desirable as civilian administrations are, global powers are not wedded to democratic regimes by any means. Egypt exemplifies that point. General AbdelFattahel-Sisi, the current Egyptian leader, and others, removed the democratically elected Mohammed Morsi, on July 3, 2013. El-Sisi remains a key ally of the global superpowers who, ostensibly, care little about his dictatorial tendencies so long as there is an effective alignment of strategic interests, which on the facts of Egyptian/Western geopolitical dynamics is the case.

Third, there is a de facto, as distinguished from a de jure, proxy war between Western powers on the one hand, and Russia, via, its private military contractor, the Wagner Group, in the ECOWAS region. The geopolitical volatilities attest to the truism that indeed, nature abhors a vacuum.

France, the Western colonial power, withdrew its military forces from Mali in August 2022, in part, owing to its inability to sustainably annihilate extremist terrorism. The vacuum established by the French departure, set the scene for broader and deeper Russian expansion in Mali.

The Wagner Group is active in Mali and that country’s military junta has expressed its strong pro-Russian links by procuring the latter’s weaponry, offering diplomatic support at the United Nations and benefiting from wide-ranging Russian technical assistance. The quid pro quo is that Russia has acquired vast stakes in the country’s vast mineral resources and has crystallised its military presence in that contested space, amidst claims of human rights abuses.

Plus, the extremely fragile and precarious dynamics of extremist terrorism straddling the ECOWAS sub-region with over six million internally displaced persons, over 500,000 refugees, 1,800 terrorist attacks and approximately 4,600 deaths between January and June 2023 alone, according to the United Nations, imperils the basis for any military intervention in those divergent states.

In the final analysis, true democracy, certainly affords the people the choice of who leads them, civic participation, constitutional governance, ethical leadership, the rule of law, respect for human rights in progressive societies.

However, where a military dictatorship has been fostered on the divergent countries of Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, the critical test is whether to take up arms against those states for violating the principles of the ECOWAS Treaty, impose stiff sanctions against them, or whether to catalyse options for effective diplomacy, through constructive engagement and meaningful dialogue.

Constructive engagement, realpolitik, effective diplomacy surely must be the way forward upon a sensible balance of the competing risks and benefits of engaging the divergent states.

On security grounds, no one ECOWAS Member State, can unilaterally conquer the cascading scourge of extremist terrorism ravaging the region. The bloc, needs to collaborate effectively by sharing intelligence, executing kinetic and non-kinetic operations, disrupting terrorist financing and weapons procurement mechanisms, and enforcing tougher immigration controls.

Equally, collaboration amongst Member States is pivotal to address the adverse consequences of climate change, desertification, environmental degradation; the balance of sovereign control of mineral resources and shaping mutually-beneficial economic strategies to alleviate poverty, improve education and health outcomes.

All of these can only be done through effective rapprochement.
•Ojumu is the Principal Partner at Balliol Myers LP, a firm of legal practitioners and strategy consultants in Lagos, Nigeria, and the author of The Dynamic Intersections of Economics, Foreign Relations, Jurisprudence and National Development.