ECOWAS 40 Years On

With what has come to be known as the Treaty of Lagos, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) came into being on May 28 1975. The founding fathers of the regional organisation designed it as a bloc to achieve economic cooperation and integration among member countries. Furthermore, it was founded to achieve collective self-sufficiency for the member states by means of economic and monetary unity, by creating a single large trading bloc. Forty years down the line, can the regional body claim to have achieved the goals set for it by the founding fathers, some of whom are still alive? On the surface, there is an ECOWAS Bank for Investment and Development, put in place in 2001 and an ECOWAS Parliament. There is also the West African Monetary Zone (WAMZ), which aims at establishing a strong stable currency – the “Eco” – to rival the CFA Franc, the exchange rate of which is tied to that of the Euro and is guaranteed by the French Treasury.

But ECOWAS in the past forty years has functioned in an environment of perennial rivalry and mutual suspicion between the more united Francophone countries with strong allegiance to their former colonial masters, France and the Anglophone countries whose relationship with their erstwhile colonial masters, the United Kingdom, is tenuous at best. And this has blurred its vision and mission. It is no secret that the Francophone countries have a more than domineering influence within the bloc, to the extent that even as an English-speaking candidate you need the ability to speak French as a condition for securing a job with ECOWAS. For anyone familiar with the organisation, headquartered in Nigeria, an English-speaking country, French is the official conversational and transactional language. And this has been the situation since the creation of the body. Just recently, a prominent member of the ECOWAS Parliament called for the setting up of a strictly Anglophone body to break the dominance of French affiliated countries within the bloc. This, we aver, is apologetic and unnecessary.

Also, we note with regret that within the period under review, economic integration within the sub-region has remained a mirage, as that policy objective has received little more than lip service. Worse, in our opinion, is that citizens crossing the borders of member countries still have to face the rigours of immigration formalities.

Part of the problem ECOWAS has is that Nigeria has so far failed to assert itself forcefully in an organisation it brought to birth. We do not think that setting up a parallel body of Anglophone countries is the solution. Instead, those countries, especially Nigeria, owe themselves the duty to move in and meaningfully transform the regional body, so that in the next forty years it would have achieved what it was set up to do.

(Leadership)