West Africa’s beleaguered regional grouping seems to be changing tack since three of its members announced they were leaving the organisation – a first since its inception in 1975.
The Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas) recently announced lifting sanctions on Mali, Burkina Fas and Niger, regarded as pariahs where military juntas had installed themselves through coups which the bloc has no appetite for.
However, weeks after the announcement, the three pariah are in no hurry to return to the Ecowas fold.
Ecowas came into being principally to facilitate mainly economic integration for countries in the region but in recent decades it also finds itself intervening in the governance crisis of member nations, the most recent being in the three countries.
The sanctions slapped on these three ‘rebellious’ states were meant to bring serious pressure to bear on their juntas to quickly revert back to the favoured civilian regime system through democratic elections.
It was clear that typical of the DNA of military regimes, those in Bamako, Ouagadougou and Niamey were in no mood to pander to the dictates of Ecowas, an organisation roundly criticised for its own ‘flawed’ approach to handling civilian rulers tinkering with their national constitutions to remain in power and other misgovernance issues like corruption.
One of the grievances in those countries was that Ecowas was operating like a ‘cartel’ for regional leaders who turned a blind eye as their peers ignored all the rules of democratic engagments, going as far as to flout constitutional term limits, neglect public security and safety, and put on a do-nothing attitude to arrest the slide toward greater corruption. The juntas used these transgressions as justifications for their takeovers – only for Ecowas to reject them and demand a return to those same leaders considered inept by their peoples.
Some say those leaders whether overthrown or still left at the helm with their all-time platitude and little substance, have been slowly nurturing a self-destructive dynamic complext for Ecowas, turning it into an exclusive club of power trophy hunters.
Their tendency for self-harm politically speaking brought coups on the doorsteps of Guinea’s Alpha Conde and Mohammed Bazoum in Niger, some observers critical of the bloc reasoned.
The dye was cast. Ecowas’ anti-coup position was ill-fated to clash with the region’s coup reactionaries.
One such scenario played out in Guinea where the junta’s relations with the bloc had been mutually hostile from the start, despite clear indications that civilian president Alpha Conde had forced himself to an infamous third term after tinkering with his country’s constitution which had enshrined a two-term limit.
Mamady Doumbouya on brand as a leader with ambition for a revitalised Guinea, has been defiant ever since but the organisation’s position had gradually shifted to a more amenable approach without abandoning its punitive mien which still makes negotiating a way out of the deadlock challenging.
The defiance from the capitals of the three ‘rebellious’ landlocked states of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, even in the face of threatened military intervention to reverse the coup in Niamey was unmissable.
From then on it became a tight test of wills between Ecowas and her three pariahs.
Ecowas which in more ways than one always mirrors the position of regional colossus Nigeria, dithered in the face of this defiance and even after President Bola Tinubu threatened military action to reverse Abdourahmane Tchiani’s coup and restore Mohamed Bazoum’s presidency, it was clear that indecisiveness had set in.
Some serious geopolitical factors came to the fore which strengthened the hand of the regime in Niamey and cast Ecowas and its mirror image, Nigeria to an abject diplomatic wilderness from which they are still desperately struggling to extricate themselves.
It was soon realised that the geopolitics applying in the case of Mali and Burkina Faso may not necessarily factor with Niger whose inextricably special relations with Nigeria were to be downplayed at the detriment of Ecowas’ future as a cohesive bloc of states with like-minded interests if not recognisable identities.
Respected social and political commentator, Olusegun Adeniyi summed it up perfectly by bringing into sharp focus the complex geopolitics for Nigeria in the Nigerien debacle which resembled something of a diplomatic field rigged with proverbial mines and boobytraps for vested interests on both sides of the country divide.
Writing for the Nigerian publication This Day last month, Adeniyi said: ”The Nigeria-Niger border is 1,608 kilometres long and traverses seven states: Sokoto, Kebbi, Zamfara, Jigawa, Yobe, Katsina and Borno. People in these states engage in open trade across borders and their livelihood is dependent on transactions that are now hampered”
It was pressure from these quarters at home and in Niger that Tinubu’s administration felt and paused to rethink its strategy for Niger, an immediate neighbour his predecessor President Muhammadu Buhari had variously referred to as his second home.
General Abdourahmane Tchiani understands these dynamics strengthen his hand and perhaps explains why he is playing hard ball. That’s also why President Tinubu (and by implication, the Ecowas he chairs) cannot afford to be rigid. At some point, there will have to be a compromise.
Seven months since the change in Niamey, the junta is holding its own against both regional and wider global diplomatic pressure to commit itself to a timetable for a return to civilian democratic rule.
The rhetorics far from softening had hardened and culiminated in the shock decision by the recalcitrant triumvirate to quit the body and therefore free themselves of any binding obligation to the bloc.
The deadlock had dragged on and just at a time when it looked like holding out for much longer, a series of talks has led to more dialogue and an accommodation appears not too far in the horizon.
The exit of the three states though not yet formalised, has sparked anxiety in some Ecowas capitals encapsulating a fear that this could spark a domino effect among other members in difficult relations with the bloc.
Suddenly the regional grouping looks desperate to bring back the network that won so much respectability when it successfully navigated past crisis in Guinea Bissau, Sierra Leone, Liberia and The Gambia. But times have changed and the geopolitical realities in some of these countries under military rule are not easy pickings for a bloc seen on the wane.
Clashes of political ideologies, rise in terrorist activities, a new consciousness against neocolonial patrimonies could very well account for the return of military strongmanship within the Ecowas space.
Observers had asked whether the departure of the Sahel trio may not inevitably kickstart a ‘mad rush’ to leave an organisation which is struggling to reinvent itself.
The leverage Ecowas has to reverse the decision of the Sahel trio from leaving the folding and going for their own Alliance of Sahelian States still remains to be seen.
