West African regional block may implode anytime soon

ECOWAS IS DYING. The final killers and the undertakers may well be presidents of two countries, namely France and Nigeria. The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has been going through what could best be described as slow death or instalmental death over a fairly long period of time. The symptoms of what is leading to its death have apparently been both misdiagnosed and ignored on the wrong assumption that it will self-heal. But events in recent times are not pointing in the positive direction and do not offer any real hope of an ultimate recovery. ECOWAS has been torn between internal forces of entropy and external centrifugal forces for a fairly long period of time.

ECOWAS, a 15 member-countries regional economic bloc, founded in 1975, after a treaty that came into force provisionally on 28 May 1975, should be clocking its 50th anniversary in just a matter of weeks’ time this year if all have remained well. But the regional bloc goes into its Golden Jubilee with fewer memberships as it is now three members short of the original fifteen. The foreboding was very obvious but the reactions to it were rather dumb and inappropriate. Events leading to the reduction of membership were given a rather cosmetic treatment on one hand and draconian response on another. The likely responses of the affected countries were taken for granted. It is instructive to note that most heads of governments of ECOWAS member countries are hypocritical, applying some sets of standards on the “errant” countries that are different from the standards they apply to themselves. 

Among those baying for the heads of those who fell out of line with the entrenched ECOWAS leaders are presidents who have exceeded their constitutional term limits in office or have simply become strategic assets for former colonialists. When Mali military officers seized power in the August 18, 2020 coup d’état, the reactions of ECOWAS entrenched leaders did not seem to take into account the complaints of Malians exhibited in their weeks of protests against then-President Aboubakar Keita who faced calls to resign, amid accusations that his government was corrupt and failed to clamp down on an armed rebellion in the country’s north waged by groups linked to al-Qaeda and ISIL (ISIS), especially the security crises that the new military government promised to tackle the fighters swiftly. The military leaders gave an opportunity for what was a semblance of a democracy in replacement of the toppled Keita’s government. The May 24, 2021 Malian coup d’état was when the Malian military Vice President Assimi Goïta eventually removed President Bah N’daw, Prime Minister Moctar Ouane and firmly took control of the government. 

The hypocrisy on the part of the ECOWAS leaders was evident in the draconian economic sanctions imposed on Mali after its first coup of August 2020 and further reinforced after the second coup of May 2021. The suspension of Mali from ECOWAS in response to the second coup may have marked a turning point for Mali and probably other countries that followed.

After the second coup in Mali and subsequent military takeovers in Guinea Conakry, Burkina Faso and Niger, ECOWAS imposed targeted sanctions, including travel bans and asset freezes on the coup leaders and their families. 

Although the sanctions on Mali were lifted when the transitional government was put in place, ECOWAS leaders nonetheless still remained determined to restore the deposed Keita to office as president. As of August 2024, the optimistic ECOWAS leaders still said they would dispatch envoys to coup-stricken Mali to help secure “the return of constitutional order.” That turned out to be a mirage and sounded delusional in the context of unfolding events championed by the military leaders of three of the four West African countries that have come under military leadership within a space of four years. The failures of the democratic governments in West Africa have become rather stark and obvious. The sobriquet of “Western allies” earned by these democratic leaders has come to connote something different from what was probably intended. To be a Western ally tends to mean a strategic asset in the hands of the West, which does not necessarily bode well for the African countries. 

The ferocity with which France has fought against those francophone countries that have been taken over by military leaders pointed at some things. A mark of superior influence was probably intended to be made when France suspended the flights of Air France to Burkina Faso after Ibrahim Traoré took over power from Paul-Henri Damiba. When Air France signified the intention to restore flights to Burkina Faso, Traoré gave his own conditions. Air France must have met a shocker in that rather unexpected response. Niger Republic’s military leaders had their own shockers in the waiting when France threatened to militarily invade Niger in an attempt to restore the deposed Mohamed Bazoum into power. Here is where diplomatic relations went terribly awry. 

Working with its “allies” in ECOWAS, France had intended to overrun Niger. Both got things wrong and met a brick wall. For France, it is known that the outdated idea of Françafrique was a selfish one from the very beginning. It was meant to protect the strategic interests of France in Africa rather than of African countries under its post-colonial influence. France that purportedly practices constitutional democracy at home has been actively supporting and enabling civilian dictatorship and aberrant democracy in Africa as long as these serve its interests. France looked the other way when Alpha Condé changed the constitution to enable him to run for a third term in Guinea Conakry. It not only did the same in Côte d’Ivoire, but actively supported Alassane Ouattara to change the constitution to run the third term. Now, Ouattara is reportedly angling for a fourth term in the coming election cycle. How are these different from the military coup that France tried to help quell? 

The desperation of France to sustain its influence on its former colonies is very awful. It is doubtful if ECOWAS leaders really put France’s involvement in the subregional member countries in the right perspectives. For ECOWAS to easily lend itself as a platform for France to overthrow a military government in any of the ECOWAS countries is a sign of poor diplomatic dexterity. Take the ‘eco’ regional currency for instance. This was an idea that has been under consideration since 2000. Its failure to take off is partly attributable to ECOWAS docility and partly to France’s meddling. France, on its part, has capitalised on the dichotomy between the francophone and Anglophone countries to stifle the ‘eco’ idea. When it eventually wanted to get ‘eco’ going, France adopted a backdoor approach, colluding with Côte d’Ivoire’s Ouattara, in an attempt to make the ‘eco’ a francophone thing as an effective replacement of the CFA that has been in use since 1945. In doing so successfully, France would have effectively drawn the WAEMU economy into the EU under the European Central Bank in a way that now puts CFA completely out of relevance since France itself has stopped using the franc as far back as 2000 when it adopted the euro as its national currency. This would have further driven a wedge between the francophone and Anglophone members of ECOWAS which would have ensured a perpetual control of its francophone members from France. Thankfully, the ‘eco’ conspiracy failed. However, despite the setback to France’s tactics, the dream of a regional currency, either by the ECOWAS 15 or WAEMU under the francophone regional arrangement, may not be realised after all.

Now, France has turned to the option of forcibly removing military governments and reinstalling deposed democratic leaders, a move that ECOWAS leaders erroneously accepted as helpful. It was in one of such erroneous moves, and an attempt to be heroic, that the new president of Nigeria, Ahmed Tinubu, went headlong with France in trying to impress France by overrunning a neighbouring Niger Republic and removing the new military leader. That decision and the actions that followed have proved to be fatally flawed. Not only did it fail to achieve the intended purpose, it actually ignited a strong diplomatic standoff between Niger and Nigeria as well as led to the expulsion of the French military troops and ambassador from Niger. As it turned out, the resolve of Niger military leaders was underestimated. France lost Niger. Not only did it lose Niger, it lost three of the four ECOWAS francophone countries now under military rule. In the same way, ECOWAS has lost those three members permanently as they have formed a new confederation known as Alliance of Sahel States (AES) or Alliance des États du Sahel in its French version where the acronym is derived. The initial bravado of ECOWAS has only succeeded in reducing its membership in number, population and landmass as the three members that left occupy nearly half of the entire ECOWAS landmass. 

To seal their exit, they have officially withdrawn from the regional economic bloc January 29, 2025, two months ago in a historic announcement that followed their decision that was made known a year ago. The withdrawal of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger is a huge blow to ECOWAS as well as to France. There is no gainsaying the fact that this will significantly reduce the influence of France in West Africa and might lead to a further weakening of ECOWAS as a regional economic bloc. The Sahel states of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger have carved out a niche for themselves and they stand the chance of gaining more members from West and Central Africa. Recently, the decision of Chad to end its military pact with France may draw the Central African country closer to the AES, or it may be part of the initial steps toward integration into the AES. Things are happening fast for the AES. The possibility of a new entrant into the confederate is looming large. On January 17, 2025, Togo’s Foreign Minister Robert Dussey, announced that the Togolese government had not ruled out Togo joining the Alliance of Sahel States. “It’s not impossible,” he said. That was in January. In March, however, it began to get clearer that Togo is considering joining the AES, a strategic decision that could strengthen AES regional cooperation. Specifically, admission of Togo into the AES fold will offer these landlocked nations access and gateway to the Atlantic Ocean, potentially alleviating the economic and logistical pressures as well as effectively breaking the blockade that their recalcitrance — from ECOWAS reckoning — may have caused. In all, it is clear that ECOWAS may not recover as more and more countries switch alliances and the AES gains more members. In the same way, the influence of France in francophone West Africa seems set to continue to diminish. This may reverberate on the economy of France in particular and of the EU in general as the African cash cows are gaining their final independence from the stranglehold of France. 

The military leaders of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger are now teaching West Africa the lessons about self-reliance and freedom from colonial influence — an intervention that the so-called democratic leaders have failed to achieve. It is therefore fitting to ask whether democratic governments in West Africa are truly beneficial to the people or to the Western countries that use the African democratic leaders as pawns in the name of “Western allies.”

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