West Africa’s troublesome trio

SIR: The decision by Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger Republic, three landlocked sub- Saharan African countries, to pull out of the Economic Community of West African States ( ECOWAS) has sparked fears of increased instability and insecurity in the region.

Recently emboldened by military take- overs, the three countries have accused ECOWAS of being a tool in the hands of neocolonialists. As if all along, beyond each of them, ECOWAS was not a foreign body, as is each of them to each other. It is a survival instinct to find emergency unity, to draw friends from anywhere, in desperation.

Three coups— Mali in 2021, Burkina Faso in 2022 and Niger in 2023— have defined this decision to leave ECOWAS. The regional bloc upped the intensity of its response with each coup, until it threatened to invade Niger Republic. ECOWAS is losing members because it has become a threat to the threats that democracy faces in West Africa. The tiny regional bloc has become a direct danger to the daredevils of West Africa’s democracy. What is a tragedy to ECOWAS is not the loss of the three countries. They were never superpowers in the bloc. ECOWAS has had to pull each of them by their bootstraps before. The tragedy is the coups, the blow to democracy and the fact that the coups and the decision to pull out of ECOWAS is the decision of a few disgruntled and potentially despotic soldiers.

Three decayed teeth have been pulled out of the mouth of ECOWAS, but the body cannot feel relief. Rather, it should feel regret at this retreat of democracy in West Africa and what it could mean for the contagion of coups. Economics may have informed the formation of the group, but democracy came to become its highest ideal. Because even from the beginning, it was clear that there was to be no prosperity without democracy.

Read the remaining part of this article on www. guardian. ng Kene Obiezu, keneobiezu@gmail.com