Politics | Center for Community Law

President Boakai Reinstates Liberia’s Electoral Chief

Guest — Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:24:50 +0000

President Boakai Reinstates Liberia’s Electoral Chief
Center for Community Law

By Paul Ejime*
President Joseph Boakai has reinstated Madam Davidetta Browne-Lansanah as Chairperson of Liberia’s National Elections Commission (NEC) one month after her “indefinite” suspension from the post.
According to an Executive Mansion statement on 15 January 2025, her suspension had followed an investigation into recent protests by aggrieved NEC workers regarding “administrative decisions taken by the NEC Chairperson without proper consultation.”
Madam Browne-Lansanah was accused of “unilaterally announcing the closure of the NEC office for one month and dismissing 25 employees without the knowledge or approval of the NEC Board of Commissioners, as required by law.”
However, in a vindication of Madam Browne-Lansanah, a new government statement on 20th February said the lifting of the suspension was “with immediate effect,” following a high-level meeting on 18th February “attended by the NEC Board of Commissioners, the ECOWAS Ambassador to Liberia, and senior officials of the Ministry of State for Presidential Affairs.”
In administrative language, an indefinite suspension of a public servant is usually followed by dismissal, but informed sources said, “nothing untoward or unprofessional” was found against Madam Madam Browne-Lansanah.
According to the sources, “some politicians within the corridors of power might have tried to use NEC insiders to undermine the authority of a woman described as “rugged, strong-willed and independent-minded.”
Madam Browne-Lansanah received local and international praise for delivering a successful and one of Liberia’s most credible and transparent presidential and legislative elections in October 2023.
She was reported to have clashed with some commissioners last year over administrative matters resulting in the dismissal of some employees for “gross insubordination.”
This led to protests by some employees at the NEC headquarters in Monrovia.
Under the Liberian constitution, the NEC chairperson’s role is tenured, and Madam Browne-Lansanah’s term runs out in two years.
Liberia’s Rule of Law Legislative Caucus had described her suspension as “unconstitutional,” affirming that “NEC’s independence, protected under the Constitution, is vital to safeguarding democracy” in the country.
“The Supreme Court of Liberia has ruled unequivocally that the suspension of tenured officers is tantamount to their removal. Such removals are constitutionally permissible only through the impeachment process, which involves, the National Legislature,” the Caucus added.
It urged the “President to rescind (his) decision and allow constitutional processes to prevail,” adding: “The erosion of institutional independence risks plunging the country into uncharted territory and threatens the very essence of our democracy.”
To his credit, President Boakai has allowed the rule of law to prevail, with Madam Browne-Lansanah’s reputation intact.
In lifting the suspension, the president expressed the hope that the “uncertainty surrounding the NEC has been addressed, clearing the way for the smooth conduct of the upcoming Nimba County by-election to fill the vacancy left as a result of the passing of Senator Prince Yormie Johnson.”
The NEC was part of the 2003 Comprehensive Peace Agreement that ended Liberia’s14-year civil war. It replaced the 1986 Elections Commission as “an autonomous government institution, independent of any branch of government with powers to run elections in Liberia.”
According to Chapter 2, Section 2.1 of the New Elections Law of 2014, the NEC “shall be under the direction and management of seven (7) Commissioners appointed by the President of Liberia, who shall appoint one of them as Chairman and another as Co-Chairman. All of the appointments shall be subject to the consent of the Senate.”
Madam Browne-Lansanah is the fifth NEC Chairperson. In 2011, one of her predecessors, James Fromayan was forced to step down after being accused of bias by then-opposition leader George Weah.
The same George Weah, as President, appointed Madam Browne-Lansanah as NEC Chair in April 2020 and lost his re-election bid in the 2023 elections conducted by her.
A veteran broadcast journalist with a master’s degree in public administration and bachelor’s degrees in political science and public administration, Madam Browne-Lansanah also boasts some career experience working in the UN system before joining NEC 10 years ago as a commissioner.
She served as Co-Chair and Acting Chairperson before assuming the substantive position of Chairperson in 2020, pledging to “strengthen NEC’s core values of independence, integrity, professionalism and consistency.”
At a time when the ECOWAS region is grappling with the resurgence of military incursions in politics, badly run elections and three member States on the verge of quitting the 15-nation organisation, Liberia, Senegal and lately Ghana, hold up hope for survival of electoral democracy
*Ejime is a Global Affairs Analyst and Consultant on Peace & Security, and Governance Communication*

The post President Boakai Reinstates Liberia’s Electoral Chief appeared first on Center for Community Law. written by Guest

Jittery Junta Leaders and Compelling Needs for ECOWAS Unity

Guest — Wed, 29 Jan 2025 09:07:40 +0000

Jittery Junta Leaders and Compelling Needs for ECOWAS Unity
Center for Community Law

By Paul Ejime*

Ahead of the 29 January 2025 deadline for their self-imposed exit from ECOWAS, the junta leaders of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, the Alliance of Sahel States, AES, have become jittery, deploying every trick, including disinformation, misinformation and blackmail to deflect blame for the inevitable consequences and uncertainty of their military adventure.

ECOWAS leaders at their last Abuja summit in December 2024 warned the three countries that having served notice of their withdrawal from the regional bloc in January 2024, the separation will become effective 12 months later, according to the regional bloc’s relevant protocol. This is despite the grace period of six months mentioned in the summit Communique. After receiving official correspondence from the ECOWAS Commission on the summit’s decision, the juntas have gone into propaganda overdrive.

For context, Niger is a country that has benefitted and continues to reap from Nigeria’s generosity including infrastructural development such as the rail system, electricity supply and new road networks. When ECOWAS leaders toyed with the idea of using military force to restore constitutional order in Niger following the August 2023 military coup led by Gen. Abdourahamane Tchiani, Nigerians were among the strongest opponents of the move arguing that seven Nigerian states shared borders and affinity with Niger.

It is therefore ludicrous for Tchiani to be accusing Nigeria of collaborating with France to destabilise Niger. In reality, the three AES countries are landlocked, and the Tchiani-led junta has fallen out with authorities in Benin Republic, a neighbouring country. In addition to their border dispute, Niger no longer has access to the Benin port for its imports and this has resulted in severe hardship in Niger, charactised by scarcity of essential goods, run-away inflation, high unemployment, a dysfunctional healthcare system and avoidable deaths in hospitals.

Instead of addressing their domestic existential threats, coupled with criticism of human rights violations and intolerance of dissent, Tchiani and his colleagues in Mali and Burkina Faso are blaming outsiders for the humanitarian crisis they brought on their people.

ECOWAS might have made a mistake by attempting to use military force on Niger without exhausting other available options. However, military rule is an aberration in today’s World and the organisation has since changed tact, using diplomacy instead, to engage its four member States under military rule, including Guinea.

Yet, the three junta leaders are unyielding. Meanwhile, the appalling security situation, one of the reasons the military rulers gave for toppling the civilian governments has not improved. Armed groups are still inflicting heavy casualties on civilians and soldiers in the three countries.

The AES juntas claim to detest France, but their countries are still members of the Francophone West African Economic and Monetary Union, UEMOA, supported by Paris. They are also still using the franc CFA currency, controlled by the French Treasury.

It is interesting that after agreeing on new national passports that will not bear the ECOWAS insignia, the junta leaders have announced that ECOWAS citizens can visit their three countries without a visa, which is consistent with the ECOWAS 1979 free movement protocol, a case of eating their cake and having it.

ECOWAS at 50 this year, cannot claim to be perfect. One of its major problems is leadership at the national and regional levels. But just as a chain is as strong as its weakest link, an organisation is only as good/effective as its weakest member.

ECOWAS evolved from the ashes of military dictatorships, however, in the last 12 years, the malaise of sit-tight syndrome, state capture, indiscriminate altering of national constitutions, election rigging, stifling of opposition and personalisation of democracy” crept in.

Critics now see the regional economic bloc once praised for its track record in conflict management and resolution as a club of self-serving leaders lacking the political will to end “political or constitutional coups,” which are as dangerous if not deadlier than military coups. But the solution is not in more coups, civilian or military. Urgent collective and deliberate measures are required to arrest the slide in the interest and benefit of community citizens in the “ECOWAS of People”.

The statement credited recently to the Togolese Foreign Minister Robert Dussey to the effect that Togo could join the AES countries, requires further interrogation since the Togolese President Faure Gnassingbe and his Senegalese counterpart Diomaye Faye are the ECOWAS envoys negotiating rapprochement with the AES group.

Is Faure running with the hare and hunting with the hound? Last year, his government carried out controversial changes to Togo’s constitution and conducted widely criticised legislative elections, believed to pave the way for his tenure elongation in violation of regional protocols. Togo has covertly offered the AES countries access to its Lome port and recently, all four countries had a joint military exercise. Could Togo’s reported plan to join the AES group, Faure’s ploy to pre-empt ECOWAS’ attempt to question his dodgy democratic credential Faure’s political ambition?

There is a strong anti-French sentiment in Francophone African countries linked to controversial colonial agreements including defence/military pacts, which the AES leaders are capitalising on for their populist dispositions. The agreements have nothing to do with ECOWAS, so it begs the question that the AES leaders are blaming the organisation for them.

To come clean of accusations of foreign influence/interference, ECOWAS must assert its independence and put its house in order but not succumb to blackmail. The organisation should innovate and reinvent itself to withstand emerging threats from the geopolitical and geostrategic shifts in international relations ecosystem.

ECOWAS leaders should be pulling together, including reaching an agreement on the term limit for the President/Prime Minister in Member States, to stop the tenure elongation syndrome haemorrhaging the organisation. They should deliver good governance and muster the political will to end political or constitutional coups and other causes/enablers of military coups.

Ghana’s new President John Mahama has named a Special Envoy to the AES countries. The Ghanaian leader should be encouraged to work within the ECOWAS system to prevent a further weakening of the organisation.

Also, Nigeria as the “big brother, regional power” and the current ECOWAS Chair, should step up to the plate and work with other leaders to champion the rescue and repositioning of ECOWAS.

Membership of a united ECOWAS provides unlimited opportunities for regional cooperation and development. ECOWAS/AES’ separation will unleash potential negative consequences on the population of the AES countries, including massive loss of jobs from the closure of Community institutions and humanitarian food reserve facilities. Also, there will be an end to the benefits of regional free trade scheme and the immediate recovery of more than US$273 million at the ECOWAS Bank for Investment and Development (EBID) loans and liabilities.

A sudden exit from the ECOWAS Inter-Governmental Action Group against Money Laundering (GIABA), will also make the AES countries vulnerable to the global Finance Action Task-force (FATF) sanctions, plus an end to regional security cooperation, shared intelligence and coordinated joint military operations, which will make the countries easy targets for more deadly attacks by terrorist and armed insurgency groups.

Addressing the media in Abuja on Monday 27 January, the Head of EU Delegation to Nigeria and ECOWAS, Ambassador Gautier Mignot urged ECOWAS to reconsider its decision on the AES group.

“It is a decision that we regret because we strongly support West African integration. Splitting does not seem to us a good idea,” said the envoy, who cited the EU’s experience with Brexit, based on negotiation and dialogue.

The junta leaders should also take a cue from the EU official’s counsel, bearing in mind that they will be held accountable for the consequences of dragging millions of their compatriots into socioeconomic catastrophe and political uncertainty.

ECOWAS is only demanding that they respect regional protocols and honour their countries’ obligations and commitment to democratic principles instead of sticking to endless opportunistic political transition programmes designed for their self-perpetuation in power.

It is within the rights of AES nations to associate or pursue common goals, but not necessarily by quitting ECOWAS. Organisations such as the Mano River Union; Lake Chad Basin Commission/Authority, the Zone of Prosperity and UEMOA, are all members of ECOWAS.

*Ejime is a Global Affairs Analyst and Consultant on Peace & Security, and Governance Communications*

The post Jittery Junta Leaders and Compelling Needs for ECOWAS Unity appeared first on Center for Community Law. written by Guest

ECOWAS Unravelling: Will Mahama’s 2nd Coming Be a Silver Lining?*

Centre for Community Law — Thu, 09 Jan 2025 17:10:17 +0000

ECOWAS Unravelling: Will Mahama’s 2nd Coming Be a Silver Lining?*
Center for Community Law

*By Paul Ejime*

The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) is 50 this year. However, for those who care about the future of the organisation once acclaimed as a trailblazer in regional economic integration, especially conflict management and resolution, the situation calls more for a deep reflection and introspection instead of popping Champagne cocks.

From the time when some of its member countries were under military dictatorships or with one rebel government in the bush and another in the state capital, ECOWAS managed to evolve to a period when all its 15 member States practised one form of democratic government or another.

For more than a decade after its formation on 28 May 1975 through the Treaty of Lagos, the organisation was seized with peace and security challenges involving sporadic conflicts and civil wars, beginning with the two civil wars in Liberia. Dozens of military coups also toppled elected governments.

On each occasion, ECOWAS leaders ensured there was an eventual return to constitutional rule, using regional instruments with the carrot and stick approach, including suspension of membership or imposition of sanctions on errant members where diplomacy failed.

But gradually, the regional leaders took their eyes off the ball, allowing unbridled alteration of national constitutions and election rigging for term elongation, gross violations of human rights, suppression of opposition and shrinking of the democratic space.

The democratic regression continued unabated, until 2020 when former Col now General Assimi Goita and his military colleagues led the coup that ousted the government of elected President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita.

By the middle of 2023, the region had witnessed more than half a dozen putsches, the game changer being on 26 July 2023 in Niger, led by the head of the country’s presidential guard General Abdourahamane Tchiani, who has since proclaimed himself the leader of a new military junta. Niger thus joined Mali, Guinea and Burkina Faso as ECOWAS countries now under military dictatorships.

Instead of using its tried and tested strategies in whipping wayward member States into line, ECOWAS leaders mismanaged the situation by jumping headlong into the fray, imposing sweeping sanctions and threatening the use of military force to restore constitutional rule in Niger. Newly elected Nigeria’s President Bola Tinubu, who was still fighting legal battles to secure his election was made Chairman of the Authority of ECOWAS Heads of State and Government.

Perhaps to reciprocate that gesture, he caused Nigeria to suspend electricity supply to neighbouring Niger, even though the bilateral power supply agreement was not covered under any ECOWAS protocol.

Apart from the unpopular decision to use force in Niger, which was later abandoned, the role of France and its Francophone African allies, especially Cote d’Ivoire during the division between ECOWAS and its three Sahelian States of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, did not help matters.

In December 2023, the three, called the Alliance of Sahel States, or AES, served notice of their intention to quit ECOWAS “immediately.”

ECOWAS has since realised its mistake and changed tact, adopting diplomacy and negotiations to woo back the three countries, which have adamantly dug in their heels,

At their last summit in Abuja last December, ECOWAS leaders still gave the junta leaders a six-month “cooling period” to reconsider their decision to pull their countries out of ECOWAS, failing which the separation would be deemed to have started in January 2025.

Barring last ditch efforts, the divorce could mark an unprecedented turning point in the history in ECOWAS and regional integration in Africa, with potential far-reaching consequences.

Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, all landlocked countries, have expelled the troops of former colonial power, France, and the anti-French sentiments, which the junta leaders are riding on for their populist stance, have continued to grow.

The Senegal government of President Diomaye Faye, the ECOWAS Chief negotiator charged with convincing the three renegade countries to return to the fold, has also told Paris to close the French military base in the West African country and so has Chad, a non-ECOWAS member State.

General elections are due in Cote d’Ivoire this year and in what is seen as political expediency, or “a pre-emptive strike,” President Alassane Ouattara has also announced a phased withdrawal of French troops from one of the bases in the country.

But to put issues in context, it is the citizens of the Francophone countries that are behind the anti-French sentiments. They started the movement, before the military juntas joined.

Critics are unconvinced about the junta leaders’ sincerity of purpose. A critical examination of their careers would show that they are all beneficiaries of the French system. Several years after they seized power, there is little or no progress in their political transition programmes.

In clear violation of regional and continental protocols, they have also indicated their intention to stand as candidates in elections for transition to civilian rule, which many consider a sign they are bent to perpetuate themselves in power and not “liberators” as they claim.

The three countries still belong to the eight-nation West African Economic and Monetary Union, UEMOA, set up by France, which are members of ECOWAS and using the CFA franc, controlled by the French Treasury. The juntas grouse with ECOWAS, could be that it is the only organisation pressuring them to return to constitutional rule.

Zimbabwe’s diplomat, Ambassador Arikana Chihombori-Qua, deserves much credit for consistently calling out the French for the “inhumane” colonial pacts it forced on leaders of former African colonies at independence. Through her, the outside world became aware that Paris was making some 500 billion dollars per year from the exploitation of Francophone Africa. Unsurprisingly, she was sacked from her role as the African Union’s representative to the United Nations in 2019.

In the assessment of ECOWAS’ performance, it is not all gloom and doom, but perhaps, the proverbial half-full or half-empty cup. However, the undeniable truth is that all is not well with the organisation. By its standards, ECOWAS has under-performed, particularly in the last decade.

In a dynamic world of shifting geopolitics and geostrategic ecosystem, with multilateralism yielding place to bilateral/unilateral pursuits and new nationalism, characterised by emerging global threats of terrorism, insurgencies, extremism, and the invasion of social media, disinformation/misinformation and fake news, it would be naive to expect ECOWAS to be static or immune to external influence/interference.

Organisations, such as the United Nations and even the European Union, which are reference points, experience a bad patch or “wilderness” period. But life coaches will tell you that ‘it is not how many times you fall, but your ability to rise from each fall that determines your strength, sustainability and future.’

Applying this maxim to ECOWAS, it is fair to say that while the organisation should be proud of its past achievements, such as the free movement of persons, goods and services, and the right to residence and establishment, the challenges and threats of regional disintegration are real and present.

While, pre- and immediate post-independent African leaders did the heavy lifting by ensuring that much of Africa and its people were emancipated from slavery and colonialism, many African countries are still dependent and contemporary African leaders have failed their people by being self-serving instead of giving meaning to the nominal independence of their countries.

For the wobbly ECOWAS, the worst-case scenario could be the eventual withdrawal of the three AES countries or the balkanisation of the economic bloc, which will be a major setback.

On a positive note, the presence of Burkina Faso’s junta leader Capt Ibrahim Traore at the inauguration of Ghana’s new President John Dramani Mahama on 7th January 2025 could be a silver lining. Ghana has demonstrated democratic maturity by successfully conducting the ninth cycle of general elections with the fourth peaceful transfer of power between ruling and opposition parties for 33 years since its return of the multiparty system in 1992.

For Mahama, it is a glorious comeback with an overwhelming victory of 56% vote and a commanding parliamentary majority, after a hung parliament and the best presidential outing since the country’s independence from Britain in 1957.

He could deploy his experience and work to bequeath indelible legacies to his country which prides itself as the Black Star of Africa. At the regional level, Mahama could also team up with his colleagues, particularly Nigeria’s President Tinubu to reposition and refocus ECOWAS on the dreams of its founding fathers.

Every organisation requires a pillar/leader, which ECOWAS has lacked over the past decade. Like their predecessors combined to galvanise other regional leaders to end the civil wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone, Tinubu and Mahama owe their countries and the region the duty and responsibility to provide the necessary leadership that will prevent ECOWAS from disintegration. Tinubu as ECOWAS Chair was Guest of honour at Mahama’s inauguration.

*Ejime is a Global Affairs Analyst and Consultant on Peace & Security, and Governance Communications*

The post ECOWAS Unravelling: Will Mahama’s 2nd Coming Be a Silver Lining?* appeared first on Center for Community Law. written by Centre for Community Law

Does Africa Have a January Problem?

Centre for Community Law — Sun, 05 Jan 2025 12:28:06 +0000

Does Africa Have a January Problem?
Center for Community Law

By Chidi Anselm Odinkalu*
Fifty-seven years ago, almost to the month, celebrated Kenyan political scientist, Ali Mazrui observed that “for some reason, a disproportionate number of the historic acts of violence in Africa since independence have tended to happen in the months of January and February.” He had good reason for this.
In January 1961, the Belgians and the Americans arranged to hand over to Moise Tshombe in Katanga, Patrice Lumumba, the inconvenient post-colonial Prime Minister of the country now known as the Democratic of Congo. The following month, the world learnt about the brutal fate that befell Lumumba. The Congo and, indeed Africa, have both paid a heavy price for those events.
Togo’s first president, Sylvanus Olympio, was killed in January 1963.
Two years later, in January 1965, Pierre Ngendandumwe, Burundi’s Prime Minister, was assassinated.
In the year before the assassination of Ngendandumwe, meanwhile, Uganda’s, John Okello, led the overthrow of Sultan Jamshid bin Abdullah in the very bloody Zanzibar Revolution. America’s Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) would later record with clinical economy that the effect of the revolution was that “the Arab regime of Zanzibar vanished in a single day as its leaders fled, died or were interned.”
The year after the assassination in Burundi, it was the turn of Nigeria’s Prime Minister, Abubakar Tafawa Balewa together with the regional premiers in the Northern and Western regions. The following month, Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah was overthrown while on his way to see Mao Tse Tung in Beijing, China.
Professor Mazrui never provided a dispositive answer to his question whether there is “any special reason why the opening months of January and February from year to year should have had such a disproportionate share of Africa’s great acts of turbulence.” Instead, he offered a telling insight, arguing that these events were the fallouts of the search for two forms of legitimacy essential to the trajectory of Africa after the colonial experience. One was the legitimacy of the state, and the other was the legitimacy of regimes or of rulers.
Nearly six decades later, these twin problems of state and regime legitimacy continue to afflict African countries, although the ways in which different countries now respond to them have arguably made our collective African Januaries a little more interesting.
In many countries, elections – rather than assassinations – have become the chosen path. In 2024, the people defenestrated ruling parties in Botswana, Ghana, Senegal, and even South Africa.
Namibia’s ruling party edged a contest that produced the country’s first female president in an act of political survival for the ruling SWAPO that may have postponed its day of electoral reckoning.
Of course, some of the elections during the year re-enacted familiar scenes from a discredited part in Africa’s history.
Tunisia’s election in October 2024 was arranged to re-select law professor and incumbent President Kais Saied, with 90.7% of the votes cast. It was like a scene from the period before the Arab Spring.
Since the turn of the millennium, however, most of Africa’s elections have been increasingly decided by court judges, not voters. In the latest example, in Mozambique, the ruling FRELIMO party procured a judicial validation of an election widely seen as heavily rigged in its favour. A country already ravaged by a murderous insurgency in its northern region of Cabo Delgado and a destructive cyclone must now live with self-inflicted ungovernability. The Botswana Democratic Party (BDP), in power since independence in 1966, made a different choice when the people rejected it.
Judicial involvement in elections is not without high risk to the judges involved, or the political stability.
To deliver their judgment nullifying the rigged presidential election in 2020, the Malawi Defence Forces arranged to clothe all five judges of the Constitutional Court of Malawi who sat on the case with bullet-proof vests.
In the same year, by contrast, the ruling party in Mali chose to steal through the courts 31 seats won by the opposition in parliament. The result was an uprising that led first to the dissolution of the Constitutional Court, and later the overthrow of the government in a military coup.
Ghana’s 2024 election was the first in nearly one and a half decades not to end up in the courts. The candidate of the ruling party and incumbent Vice-President, Mahamudu Bawumia, conceded the race long before a far-from-credible electoral commission had got around to announcing any results. Ahead of the election, the opposition had made it clear that they would not contemplate going to court if they were denied victory. In his concession, Bawumia saved the country from what would have been an assured date with instability.
Judges do not always wait until after the ballot to weigh in with their own votes. In Burundi in 2015, President Pierre Nkurunziza was determined to run for a third term even though it seemed clear that he was constitutionally barred from doing so. The case ended up before the Constitutional Court where the judges initially decided to uphold term limits barring the president from running for a third term. Under pressure from a barrage of personalised presidential threats, the Vice-President of the Constitutional Court, Sylvere Nimpagaritse, fled into exile and “the remaining judges then changed their decision in Nkurunziza’s favour.”
Of course, the model of judicial overthrow of the popular will and its replacement with judges as the only eligible voters is an exclusively Nigerian invention. The politicians who control Nigeria’s Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) are quick to intone “Go to court” at the end of every rigged election, secure in the knowledge that they have also rigged the courts and have many of the judges safely locked away inside their bedrooms.
In Nigeria’s 2023 election cycle, over 81% of the seats contested were decided by the judges. This business model of managing elections is bad both for democracy and for the independence of the judiciary.
First, it denies citizens the right to decide who governs them or on what platform.
Second, how judges achieve this result is not much different from the toppling of elective government by soldiers with guns. The only difference when the judges do it is that they deploy the artifice of law when in fact, what they seek to do is to replace legality with corrupt whim.
Third, the depth of judicial involvement in elections in Nigeria makes the judiciary a plaything of the politicians who have every incentive to capture and corrupt it.
Fourth, this creates an internal market in judicial business that casualises all but political cases where the judges involved increase their chances of trading in judicial power and legitimacy for cash or powerful networks at the hands of politically exposed litigants.
In 2025, Nigeria will enter the foothills of another major election cycle. With all the political parties all but defanged, the main theatre of activity will be the judiciary.
In Imo State, for instance, where the National Judicial Council (NJC) has removed the Chief Judge for falsifying her age, the State Governor has chosen not to designate any replacement because, ostensibly, he does not find the options available politically palatable.
In the elections in Tanzania this year and Uganda at the end of the year, judges will be very active, persecuting regime opponents.
In Nigeria, that is already routine even before the electoral gong tolls. The upshot is almost assuredly, to guarantee uncertainty instead of ending it.
When he wrote in 1968, Ali Mazrui thought that the opening months of the year seemed to guarantee turbulence in Africa. Today, that tendency occurs all year round. Far from becoming the exception, Africa’s January may have infected the remaining months of the year with a turbulent contagion
*A lawyer and a teacher, Odinkalu can be reached at chidi.odinkalu@tufts.edu

The post Does Africa Have a January Problem? appeared first on Center for Community Law. written by Centre for Community Law

Ghana 2024 Elections, ECOWAS and AES Juntas

Centre for Community Law — Sun, 15 Dec 2024 14:57:12 +0000

Ghana 2024 Elections, ECOWAS and AES Juntas
Center for Community Law

By Paul Ejime

Ghana has pulled off another feat in democratic consolidation after successfully conducting a ninth round of generally peaceful Presidential and Parliamentary Elections. While democratic elections have become a norm in the country, the 2024 General Elections were distinct in various aspects that challenged the resilience of democracy, yet, Ghanaians rose to the occasion
Forty-eight hours after the poll, the Electoral Commission (EC) announced processed results from 267 out of 276 constituencies, and declared former President John Dramani Mahama, candidate of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), as the winner and President-elect with 56.55% of the votes against 40.61% scored by the out-going Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia, the presidential fag-bearer of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP).
Indeed, less than 24 hours from the close of balloting, Vice President Bawumia had telephoned President-elect Mahama to concede defeat.
Also, following the declaration of the official results by EC, out-going President Nana Akufo-Addo congratulated Mahama on “his decisive victory” and invited him to a meeting to initiate the transition process.
There was no rocket science to it, but a matter of political actors respecting the will of the people. The two dominant political parties had agents in almost all the more than 40,000 polling stations, who monitored process and relayed polling results to their party data system for parallel vote collation/tabulation.
Like in most elections, the run-up to Ghana 2024 was not without political tension, misinformation, disinformation, fake news and hate speech, culminating in violent incidents in some Regions/Districts, with at least one or two reported deaths and injuries.
Even after the results of the presidential race were announced, shootings, looting and destruction of public and private properties were still reported in some volatile regions. Police reported some arrests and promised prosecution of culprits.
Similar post-election violence is not uncommon in Ghana, but it reached a crescendo in the 2020 elections when eight people were killed.
Some critics believe that the “unsatisfactory” handling of the 2020 election killings and the lack of public confidence in some public institutions, might have contributed to the government’s defeat at the poll. The other factors include economic hardship, allegations of official corruption, nepotism and “political arrogance” exhibited by some public officials.
Also, artisanal illegal gold mining, locally called “galamsey,” and its negative environmental consequences (including degradation of water bodies and destruction of forest reserves) have become a major political issue, with the two major political parties trading allegations over complicity.
Equally concerning were the menace of violent extremism and vigilantism or the use of thugs/private security agents by politicians, despite the existence of the Anti-Vigilantism and Related Offences Act 999 of 1999.
The combined effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused severe economic disruptions across the globe, currency fluctuation and the Russia-Ukraine conflict, which has impacted food security for many African countries, have left the Ghanaian economy reeling out of control amid high inflation and unemployment, especially among the youth. Also, the country’s debt crisis and engagement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for economic recovery might have played a significant role in the outcome of the elections.
Akufo-Addo and Mahama, who will become Ghana’s 13^th President since the country’s independence from Britain in 1957, have now locked horns in four presidential battles with both emerging victorious on two occasions – (2012 and 2024 Mahama) and (2016 and 2020 Akufo-Addo).
The 2020 race produced a hung parliament with the two dominant parties having an equal number of MPs in parliament, and the opposition NDC producing the parliamentary Speaker for the first time in the country’s political history. The decision by four MPs to quit their parties and the Supreme Court’s order stopping the Speaker from declaring the MPs’ seats vacant had aggravated the political tension.
Ghana has 24 registered political parties. Thirteen (13) fielded presidential candidates, while fifteen (15) had candidates for the parliamentary elections, complemented by independents. Nonetheless, the ruling NPP and the opposition NDC remain the dominant parties, alternating control of political power three times in 32 years (2000, 2008 and 2016) and now in 2024.
According to the EC, 900,000 new eligible voters were added to the national voter’s register in 2024 bringing the total to 18,774.159 (15% higher than in 2020), in an estimated national population of 34.42 million.
In a marked departure from tradition, the 2024 political campaigns were more of a door-to-door affair than public rallies. The NDC’s stronghold is the Volta Region and parts of the North and Muslim community, while the NPP draws its majority following from the Akan ethnic group, mainly from the Ashanti and other Southern Regions.
Religion is not overly contentious in Ghana, but the 2024 poll tested the country’s religious tolerance. It was the first time in Ghana’s history that two candidates from the two major political parties, professing different faiths came from the same region, the North. Mahama is Christian and Bawumia a Muslim.
In the end, Mahama recorded a sweeping victory with a more than 1.5 million majority vote margin, the highest since 1992. There is no perfect election. However, Ghana has demonstrated that an electoral process, which is a multi-stakeholder responsibility is integral to the entrenchment of democratic culture, nurtured by strong and resilient institutions.
As the icing on the cake, Ghana, for the first time, also has its first elected female Vice President, Prof Nana Opoku-Agyemang, Mahama’s running mate in the 2024 elections.
Local and international election observers, including from ECOWAS, the African Union and the Commonwealth, and civil society organisations, were unanimous in their positive assessment of the outcome of Ghana’s latest elections, the professionalism of most actors, and the transparency of the electoral process bar the isolated violent incidents, which they captured in their reports with recommendations particularly on collation and results management for the relevant authorities to address.
Incidentally, the ECOWAS Election Observation Mission to Ghana was led by Nigeria’s former Vice President Namadi Sambo, while the West African Elders’ Forum was headed by his boss, former President Goodluck Jonathan. The fact that President Jonathan, with Sambo as his deputy, also telephoned then-candidate Muhammadu Buhari to concede defeat in Nigeria’s 2015 presidential election, just as Bawumia has done in Ghana, was not lost on the international community.
By and large, after the successful and peaceful presidential and parliamentary elections in Senegal and Liberia, the outcome of Ghana’s elections is a strong message that democracy, with all its flaws, is the way to go, by providing the people with the mechanism to periodically change leaders who fail to deliver.
The conversation on the credibility or transparency of elections remains open-ended, but a flawed election is not enough reason to jettison democracy.
With the January 2025 deadline fast approaching on the notice issued by the junta leaders of the Alliance of Sahel States, AES, to pull their countries – Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger from ECOWAS, the message from Accra is that it is never too late for a patriotic leader to do the right thing in the interest of the people.
The citizens of AES countries are going through severe socioeconomic hardship, insecurity and political isolation, which could only worsen, with an avoidable humanitarian disaster if their countries should unceremoniously quit ECOWAS.
ECOWAS might have made some mistakes in its approach to halt the wave of military incursions into politics in West Africa, but that is no justification for military coups or unconstitutional change of governments.
Since their withdrawal announcement, the junta leaders have made little to no progress on constitutional rules or implementation of their transition programmes. They should not vindicate the notion that they are opportunistic power grabbers.
For their part, ECOWAS leaders must put their house in order at the national and regional levels by ending bad governance, corruption, human rights violations, election rigging as well as “constitutional and ballot box coups.”
*Ejime is a Global Affairs Analyst and Consultant on Peace & Security and Governance Communications

The post Ghana 2024 Elections, ECOWAS and AES Juntas appeared first on Center for Community Law. written by Centre for Community Law

ECOWAS Dilemma, Despair and Hope

Guest — Fri, 02 Aug 2024 12:15:56 +0000

ECOWAS Dilemma, Despair and Hope
Center for Community Law

By Ali Ocheni

Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, the three Alliance of Sahel States, with the French acronym AES have so far rebuffed overtures from ECOWAS and the rest of the international community to return to the regional bloc after their threat to withdraw.
This has put the future of the ECOWAS grouping in doubt. The bad situation in the politically restive region with the military takeovers of civilian governments in Mali, Guinea and Burkina Faso, only got worse with the 26 July 2023 coup in Niger.
No doubt, ECOWAS has made tremendous progress with some laudable achievements since its formation through the May 1975 Treaty of Lagos. The achievements include its flagship 1979 Protocol on the Free Movement of Persons, Goods, Services and Right to Establishment, which allows community citizens visa-free movement and the right to stay in a country other than their own for 90 days.
In addition, community citizens are free to establish businesses and reside in other member States under liberal conditions. There are also the ECOWAS Passport and Biometric Identification Card Scheme, and the ECOWAS Trade Liberalisation Scheme, which allows duty-free export of goods within the regional market of over 420 million people.
The official intra-ECOWAS trade hovers between 11% and 15%, but thanks to the large volume of informal trade by itinerant traders, Nigerian goods, for instance, have become common attractions in the markets of other ECOWAS member countries and vice versa.
ECOWAS membership has also enabled members to increase the volume of their products and services in the region, with Nigeria, the regional powerhouse, with more than half of the ECOWAS population and the biggest financier, contributing more than 60% of the ECOWAS annual budget.
ECOWAS has recorded the most progress in conflict prevention, resolution, management and maintenance of regional peace. It restored peace to Liberia, Sierra Leone, Cote d’Ivoire, The Gambia, Guinea and Guinea Bissau, among its member states challenged by conflicts.
ECOWAS has also achieved measurable success in regional infrastructure development such as the Lagos-Abidjan Highway, the West Africa Gas Pipeline and the electricity power and sustainable energy projects.
ECOWAS, as the most active of Africa’s eight Regional Economic Communities (RECs), is also expected to play a pivotal role in the success of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) project aimed at increasing the volume of continental trade and boosting economic development and industrialisation. Ghana, and ECOWAS member state, hosts the AfCTA Secretariat.
However, the future of ECOWAS is severely threatened by insecurity, characterised by terrorism, jihadist and separatist insurrections, renewed incursion of the military into politics and the AES decision to leave the regional bloc.
For more than a decade, political instability and insecurity have heightened in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger and the coups in those countries could be linked to instability in the Sahel, following the murder of Libyan leader Col. Muammar Gaddafi in 2011 in the French-led NATO intervention.
Subsequently, Mali became the epicentre of terrorist threats in the Sahel, from where armed groups spread into neighbouring ECOWAS states of Burkina Faso and Niger.
Gaddafi was able to engage the separatist Tuareg militia on a monthly salary when he was in power. After his death, the armed groups migrated and settled in large numbers with their weapons in northern Mali and Niger. Drug trafficking, kidnapping for ransom and other violent crimes took hold of the ungoverned space.
Before long, the Tuaregs reignited their armed rebellion for the state of AZAWAD in Northern Mali. ECOWAS through its Early Warning system, informed Mali and Niger about this dangerous development and advised that the militiamen be disarmed, trained and integration into the society.
While Niger heeded this ECOWAS advice and took some measures, Mali was adamant, and instead, former President Amadou Toumani Toure, reportedly paid the returning militiamen millions of dollars for pacification.
With this development, Mali and its vast porous borders with seven other countries became a haven for the armed groups including Al Qaeda, ISIS and other terrorist groups from North Africa and the Middle East.
The armed groups provided fertile ground for criminals and drug barons and became so powerful to form a separate government in northern Mali, outside the control of successive Bamako governments.
Under that state of anarchy, Capt. Amadou Sanogo seized power in the 2012 military coup, but with the intervention of Nigeria, ECOWAS and France, the coup leader and his group were persuaded to leave office, paving the way for the 2013 election which brought President Mamadou Boubocar Keita to power. He was re-elected in 2018 but was toppled in another coup led by Col. Assimi Goita in 2020.
Other causes of the political crises in the ECOWAS region include bad governance, corruption, arbitrary change of national constitutions, vote rigging and human rights violations by the civilian leaders, who also failed to end insecurity in their countries.
These factors and the lust for political power by the coup makers led to the epidemic of military takeovers from the civilians in Mali, Burkina Faso, Guinea and Niger and compounded by the refusal of the junta leaders to abide by provisions of the ECOWAS 2001 Supplementary Protocol on Democracy and Good Governance.
The sanctions imposed on the junta-led countries and the threat by ECOWAS to intervene militarily to restore constitutional order in Niger did not go down well with coup makers.
The three AES countries accused ECOWAS of imposing inhumane sanctions and failing to assist them in fighting terrorism and insecurity. They also charged ECOWAS with deviating from its “founding principles and of being teleguided by foreign powers,” especially France.
Even after ECOWAS lifted the sanctions and pulled back on the military intervention in Niger, the three AES countries have remained adamant.
Ironically, the three countries are still members of the eight-nation West African Economic and Monetary Union, UEMOA, all members of ECOWAS, set up by France and also still using the franc CFA currency controlled by the French Treasury.
From the long transition timetables announced by the junta leaders with the provision that they will be eligible to contest in the transition elections to civilian rule, it is obvious that the soldiers are bent on perpetuating themselves in power while avoiding reprimand by ECOWAS.
They may have expelled troops from EU countries led by France, and America, but the three landlocked countries, considered among the poorest in the World have also embraced Russian troops in their territories.
Doubtless, the consequences of the exit of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger from ECOWAS will affect integration and stability in West Africa and the Sahel regions, including potential impacts on the free movement of persons, goods, services and right to establishment.
The importance of the three in agriculture will also be felt – Niger is a key supplier of onions and Burkina Faso exports large quantities of tomatoes and other fruits and vegetables to the regional markets.
Another fallout will be potential exodus of citizens of the three states from the other ECOWAS member states with more than five million Malians, Burkinabes and Nigeriens in Côte d’Ivoire and many Nigeriens in Ghana, Togo and Benin, who may be forced to return home. The AES countries will lose millions of dollars of ECOWAS-negotiated trades and projects and could be forced to retaliate by expelling ECOWAS citizens from their territories.
Another consequence is that the AES states could enter into alliances with countries which might be unfriendly with ECOWAS, raising the danger of jeopardising regional security and integration.
Part of the security implication of the AES withdrawal is that the coastal states of ECOWAS could suffer the influx of terrorists from the Sahel and North Africa, further complicating the security situation in both regions.
Other benefits which the AES group could lose, include the withdrawal of their citizens working in ECOWAS institutions and their candidates seeking positions in international organisations such as the United Nations will no longer enjoy the usual ECOWAS consensual solidity and support.
While the AES countries insist on their immediate withdrawal from ECOWAS, the regional organisation is following its protocol which provides for a 12-month notice for withdrawal as happened with Mauritania, which served notice in 1999 and only left in 2000.
So, the opportunity is still available for both sides to engage to resolve their differences diplomatically, particularly with the decision by ECOWAS 7 July Summit in Abuja nominating the Presidents of Senegal, Benin and Togo as mediators to bring the three breakaway states back into the fold.
President Diomaye Faye of Senegal had already started the troubleshooting before his appointment, following his meeting with Nigerian President Bola Tinubu, the re-appointed Chairman of the ECOWAS Authority of Heads of State and Government.
However, there is serious doubt if the Presidents of Benin and Togo who are nursing third-term ambitions and were absent at the Abuja Summit, would be effective on this assignment. Both countries are currently at loggerheads over retaliatory border closures threatening their diplomatic relations. Togo is also secretly collaborating with the junta-led countries.
One viable option for ECOWAS is to allow the AES countries to continue with their alliance while still members of ECOWAS. The three are still UEMOA members, and with ECOWAS membership.
Other precedents are members of the Mano River Union, the Co-Prosperity Alliance Zone of West Africa, and the Council of Understanding, Counsiel de l’Entente in French, all pursuing common goals and objectives while retaining their ECOWAS membership.
The three AES countries as ECOWAS member states also belonged to the EU-supported G-5 Group of Sahel nations fighting terrorism.
ECOWAS and the AES must prevent turning the region into a proxy war theatre, especially with foreign powers like Russia, China, Turkey and others hoovering to establish footholds in West Africa and the Sahel. Also, replacing one foreign power with another will not guarantee solution to the security problem serve the region’s interests.
ECOWAS and the AES leaders must be reminded that their countries will be more effective in protecting their interests as a collective instead of working in silos.
Now that the AES’ concerns regarding ECOWAS sanctions and the threat of military intervention in Niger have been lifted, the junta leaders must show good faith and convince critics that their decision to withdraw from ECOWAS is not solely to avoid scrutiny or for power grab.
Most importantly, coup makers should not be allowed to benefit from their unconstitutional change of government through self-succession.
Nigeria as the current Chairman should reassert its leadership in ECOWAS and lead by example.
ECOWAS leaders must take a serious look at the regional Protocol on Democracy and Good Governance and ensure a rule of thumb application and compliance with its provisions, especially the zero-tolerance for all unconstitutional changes of government.
Constitutional or political and ballot-box coups are as dangerous and condemnable as military coups, and all coups and other anti-democratic behaviour must be met with the same severe consequences if ECOWAS is to restore its dented integrity.
ECOWAS must ensure that member states respect and comply with regional protocols and uphold international standards and best practices of democracy and good governance.
Ambassador Ali Ocheni was Nigeria’s Consul General in Shanghai, People’s Republic of China and former Head of the ECOWAS National Office in the Nigerian Foreign Affairs Ministry.

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MACKY SALL CONGRATULATES SENEGAL’S OPPOSITION LEADER ON THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION AS RIVALS CONCEDE DEFEAT*

Guest — Mon, 25 Mar 2024 18:49:29 +0000

MACKY SALL CONGRATULATES SENEGAL’S OPPOSITION LEADER ON THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION AS RIVALS CONCEDE DEFEAT*
Center for Community Law

*By Paul Ejime

Outgoing Senegal’s President Macky Sall, on Monday congratulated opposition leader Bassirou Diomaye Faye on his victory in Sunday’s presidential election.
Almost all other presidential candidates, including former Prime Minister Ahmadou Ba, the candidate of the ruling Alliance for Republic, APR, have also conceded defeat and congratulated Faye.
“I salute the smooth running of the election and congratulate the winner, Mr. Bassirou Diomaye, who is the winner by the trends. This is the victory of Senegalese democracy,” Sall said through a post on his X, former Twitter handle, hours after Ba had congratulated Faye.
The National Electoral Commission, CENA, is still compiling the official tally of the election in the country’s 14 regions.
But unofficial estimates indicate that Faye might have received about 57% of the vote, against the runner-up Ba’s 31%.
Under Senegal’s Constitution, a candidate requires more than 50% of the vote to win the presidency in the first round of balloting, otherwise, the two frontrunners go into a run-off vote.
The Appeal Court of Dakar is expected to announce the final figures of Sunday’s contest on Wednesday, and this will be validated by the Constitutional Council, if no objections are raised.
The Council has the final say on electoral matters in the country, while CENA supervises the electoral process.
President Sall will hand over power to Faye, as Senegal’s 5th and youngest President on April 2nd.
It is a perfect birthday present for Faye, who turned 44 on Sunday, the election day, and a great relief particularly to pro-democracy advocates in Senegal and ECOWAS, which is battling growing military incursions into politics in the region, with four of its 15 member States now under army rule.
Credit should also go to the Senegalese population, especially the civil society groups for their resilience in checkmating Sall’s political manoeuvrers.
Among the immediate tasks of Faye, a former tax collector is the reconciliation of a country, whose democratic standing had been shaken in the past couple of years, particularly by Sall’s tenure elongation plan, which he was forced under local and international pressure to abandon.
But this was not before the attendant political tension and street protests that killed at least 20 people, followed by uncertainties over the rescheduling of the presidential vote originally fixed for 25 February, before it was moved to March 24.
As an appeasement gesture, a subdued President Sall declared a general amnesty for detainees recently, including Faye and his comrade Ousmane Sonko, who were released to join the campaign trail.
Sonko was barred from contesting the presidential election following his conviction for radicalizing the youths, a charge critics consider politically motivated.
Meanwhile, Faye has promised to tackle corruption and address the needs of Senegal’s youthful population from where he and Sonko draw their most support.
Given the unsalutary experiences of “anointed candidates” or Godfatherism in Africa, political observers will closely monitor the Faye-Sonko relationship with political power in their hands.

The post MACKY SALL CONGRATULATES SENEGAL’S OPPOSITION LEADER ON THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION AS RIVALS CONCEDE DEFEAT* appeared first on Center for Community Law. written by Guest

HOW TO PREVENT NEW COLD WAR IN AFRICA

Guest — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 18:20:28 +0000

HOW TO PREVENT NEW COLD WAR IN AFRICA
Center for Community Law

*By Paul Ejime
Ambassador Abdel-Fatau Musah, ECOWAS Commissioner for Political Affairs, Peace and Security has advocated urgent measures to “reconcile tensions between democracy, governance and development,” and “a new compact with external partners to prevent a new Cold War in Africa.”
“The recent retreat from liberal democracy and growing instability in the West Africa sub-region and the wider Continent is taking place within a complex and dynamic global landscape characterized by an unprecedented convergence of multiple threat and opportunistic vectors, namely geopolitical and geostrategic shifts, economic downturn, currency fluctuations, digital. advancements, climate, and environmental concerns, and socio-cultural dynamics,” Dr Musah, a former Director, West African Division, United Nations, affirmed.
Addressing the International Relations Society of UK’s Oxford University at its Corpus Christi College, on 19^th January, under the theme “Regionalism in West Africa and Causes and Course of Recent Instability,” the ECOWAS senior official said, that while there might be no “single-factor explanation for the growing political and security malaise …the fledgling and stumbling liberal democracy in Africa requires urgent resuscitation through the infusion of local culture, traditions, and realities.”
He posits that “Strengthening electoral democracy by promoting good governance and development requires the collective efforts of all – governments, the citizenry, their organizations, and partners.”
Dr Musah listed major threats facing Africa and by extension, West Africa, as follows:
The cumulative impacts of pandemics, poor leadership, and macroeconomic mismanagement amidst a global financial, economic, and social downturn.
Governance and development deficits (State capture, economic mismanagement, currency instability, retreat from the periphery, marginalization, and selective provision of basic services; identity politics, youth crisis, and corruption.
Manipulation of constitutional and electoral norms and the weaponization of the judiciary to enable unconstitutional maintenance of power.
Asymmetric security crisis (terrorism, radicalization, and violent extremism, led principally by Al Qaida and Islamic State affiliates; identity-based violence (farmer-herder dynamics, inter-communal violence)
Climate change as a threat multiplier (dynamics in Central Sahel and worsening cyclical floods and drought).
Geostrategic interests and geopolitical shifts, tensions between growing interdependence amid the collapse of multilateralism and deepening multipolarity: Dynamics between the NATO Powers (Collective West); China, Russia, India (BRICS); Medium Powers (Turkey, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar) threatening a return to proxy wars.
Emerging strategic choices by leaders of the region towards traditional and emerging powers without a clear exit strategy from the dependency syndrome.
Genuine changing sentiments from below towards traditional powers, the re-birth of nationalism, and the instrumentalization of insecurity and public moods by sections of the military and their associates, and
Explosion of new technologies the pervasive influence of social media and the manipulation of opinion through misinformation and disinformation.
The Commissioner’s prescriptions to prevent Africa from becoming the theatre of a new Cold War, include the “need to reconcile the tensions between democracy, governance, and development through measures to enhance the production of democratic dividends.”
Other measures include the “Restoration of constitutional order in countries in transition (Mali, Burkina Faso, Guinea, and Niger) through dialogue and pressure, combating unconstitutional changes of government and manipulation of constitutional and electoral laws through a review of the Supplementary Protocol on Democracy and Good Governance, as well as social and peer pressure on errant leaders.”
Civil society and private sector agencies should also be empowered in favour of democratic consolidation and inclusive economic development, the Commissioner said, while also advocating: “The enhanced operationalization of the ECPF (ECOWAS Conflict Prevention Framework) and the establishment of ECOWAS ECOSOCC (ECOWAS Economic, Social & Cultural Council) to be expedited.”
Ambassador Musah further called for the “Strengthening of counter-terrorism efforts – the activation of the ECOWAS Standby Force in its kinetic mode and the coordination of disparate counter-terrorism efforts: In this regard, the timeliness of the recent UN Security Council Resolution authorizing the use of assessed contribution to sustainably fund African-led peace support operations cannot be overemphasized.”
Tracing the evolution of ECOWAS Post-Cold War trends, he said there was a “temporary shift towards a unipolar world under Pax-Americana amidst hopes for greater multilateralism (which) coincided with the virtual collapse of weak States and rebirth of liberal democracy in Africa due principally to pressures from below against autocratic, dictatorial, and military rule, amidst the weakening of external protection for such regimes. “
He also cited the “civil wars in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Cote d’Ivoire (1989-2003); and the National Conferences (which) gave birth to liberal and illiberal democracies via multi-party elections.”
There was “ECOWAS’ pivot towards security engagements, bringing into sharp relief the obvious nexus between security and development,” Commissioner Musah said, adding that this was followed by the adoption of regional Protocols to reflect the changing dynamics.
These include the ECOWAS leaders “Declaration of Political Principles (1991); Revised ECOWAS Treaty (1993); Protocol Relating to the Mechanism for Conflict Prevention, Management, Resolution, Peacekeeping and Security (1999); Supplementary Protocol on Democracy and Good Governance (2001), which prescribes zero-tolerance for unconstitutional change of government), and the ECOWAS Conflict Prevention Framework (2008).”
Dr Musah noted that until 2021, all 15 ECOWAS Member States were governed by leaders chosen through multiparty elections, and “for the first time West Africa, and Africa as a whole, witnessed the defeat of incumbents at the ballot box. To compare: Only one recorded peaceful alternation of power until 1991. Since then, there have been 31 across the continent.”
He said, “The façade of democracy was unfortunately also underpinned by serious governance and development deficits: marginalization, youth unemployment, and ethnic and religious tensions,” adding: “The end of the first Decade and the beginning of the second of the 21st Century witnessed accelerated instability characterized by the impacts of the Ebola and COVID pandemics, financial, food, and social crises, governance deficits and intensification of terrorism and violent extremism, and the re-entry of the military into politics.”
There have been at least nine reported successful or failed military incursions into politics in West Africa since 2020, with four countries currently under military rule (Mali, Guinea, Burkina Faso and Niger).
The Commissioner’s presentation was made against the background of worsening insecurity and disputed electoral processes in the region (Nigeria, Sierra Leone, and Liberia), with only Liberia producing a transfer of power from a ruling party to the opposition, as ECOWAS struggles to douse simmering political tensions in Sierra Leone, Guinea Bissau, and Senegal.
The regional organization has successfully negotiated political exile in Nigeria for Sierra Leone’s former President Ernest Bai Koroma, who was slammed with treason charges by the government of his country over an alleged coup attempt last November 26^th following disaffection from the June 24^th presidential election.
ECOWAS is also currently seized with developments in Guinea Bissau where President Umaro Embalo, in a recent controversial decision dissolved the opposition-controlled National parliament causing political disaffection in a country that operates a semi-presidential system that allows the party that controls the legislature to name the Prime Minister in addition to the control of the National Guards, while the President has authority over other national armed services.
In Senegal, which has crucial elections on February 25^th, 2024, the Constitutional Court on Saturday disqualified two major opposition presidential candidates following the government’s recent decision to sack members of the national electoral commission after it included the name of a controversial opposition leader on the electoral list.
The Gambia is another ECOWAS member State under close watch amid opposition allegations that President Adama Barrow could be gunning for a controversial third-term mandate.
Describing “citizen apathy” as “the accelerator of bad governance…,” Dr Musah acknowledged that “the political, economic, and social conditions in the region are dire but not irreversible.”
“Restoring confidence in governance in the region requires a compelling strategic approach, as well as a multidimensional, multi-actor, and multiagency effort by all critical local, national, and regional actors in a strategic partnership with the African Union and the United Nations,” he affirmed.
But more than ever before, elections have become triggers and drivers of divisive and deep-rooted political crises in Africa, exacerbated by the undemocratic influence of money and overbearing interference of the judiciary.
Consequently, analysts have warned against the dangerous trend of major election outcomes being decided by the courts instead of through the ballot box, with wealthy politicians encouraged by their brazen assurance to buy court judgments after rigging elections and blatantly taunting their opponents “to go to court.”
*Ejime, a former War Correspondent, is a Global Affairs Analyst and Consultant on Peace & Security and Governance Communications

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Alex Nain Saab Moran, Cabo Verde, the United States of America and Venezuela

Centre for Community Law — Tue, 02 Jan 2024 13:55:31 +0000

Alex Nain Saab Moran, Cabo Verde, the United States of America and Venezuela
Center for Community Law

In 2021, the jurisdiction of the ECOWAS Community Court of Justice (ECCJ) was seised in the matter of Alex Nain Saab Moran v Cabo Verde ECW/CCJ/JUD/07/2021 (25) 84 to intervene in the detention, pending extradition of Alex Nain Saab Moran in Cabo Verde. This was not just an ordinary case, given the diplomatic ingredient of the matter and the potential of the escalation into a diplomatic row. Alex Nain Saab Moran is a close ally of the Venezuelan President, Nicolas Maduro.
In the case before the ECOWAS Court, Alex Nain Saab Moran was arrested in Cabo Verde when the plane on which the he was travelling made a stopover in the Republic of Cabo Verde to refuel. The arrest was carried out by the Cabo Verdean Authority based on a red notice allegedly issued by INTERPOL, at the request of the United States of America for purposes of his extradition, based on the United Nations Convention against Transitional Organized Crime, for money laundry crimes allegedly committed in the United States (US). At the beginning of his detention, neither the red alert nor the arrest warrant issued by a US District Court was shown to Saab. He was brought before a Cabo Verdean national court for extradition proceedings, against which he made several applications for reliefs before the national courts of Cabo Verde on the basis of immunity before lodging an application at the ECCJ seeking several reliefs against Cabo Verde, principally on grounds of diplomatic immunity. It was in evidence that he was on a special mission to Iran on 12th June, 2020, pursuant to his duties as a Special Envoy for the Government of Venezuela with the mandate to negotiate with Organisations in Iran to secure humanitarian aid for the people of Venezuela, pursuant to an agreement between the government of Venezuela and Iran to that effect. In fact, while the case was ongoing, the Applicant informed the Court that he had been appointed an alternate ambassador to the African Union (AU). The Court considered his claims and rendered its decision accordingly.
In the application, Alex Nain Saab Moran invited the Court to consider and determine: (a) whether the Applicant (Saab) was subjected to arbitrary detention in Cabo Verde; (b) whether the Applicant is the victim of political persecution by the United States, and consequently by Cabo Verde; (c) whether the Applicant’s procedural rights were violated during the detention and extradition procedure in Cabo Verde; and (d) whether there is a real probability that the Applicant’s human rights will be violated if he is extradited to the USA.
The Court dismissed his claim on all other grounds for lack of proof, except for the ground of arbitrary detention in Cabo Verde, where he was successful. It was on this ground that the Court ordered that the extradition proceedings be discontinued and that the Applicant be immediately released. The Court also awarded him a compensation of Two Hundred Thousand USD for the moral damages suffered as a result of illegal detention.
Cabo Verde ignored the decision of the ECOWAS Court, preferring to the ruling of its municipal court that Saab did not have diplomatic status and extradited him to the United States in October 2021, where he was held in federal jail in Miami. Federal prosecutors in Miami charged Saab with siphoning around $350 million out of Venezuela through the United States as part of a bribery scheme linked to Venezuela’s state-controlled exchange rate. Saab was also accused of bribing Venezuelan government officials to secure payment in U.S. dollars at a favorable rate, and laundering money through a scheme involving building low-income housing in Venezuela. He pleaded not guilty, and his attorneys battled in vain to get his case dismissed by claiming diplomatic immunity. Alex Nain Saab Morán had earlier been charged in Florida in 2019 for money laundering.
On 21 December 2023, following a prisoner swap agreement between the United States and Venezuela, Saab was released from prison and allowed to return home after serving over three and a half years in custody.
The evidence relied upon by a Cabo Verde court hold that Saab had no immunity is not very clear, given that the Government of Venezuela continued to assert diplomatic immunity on Saab’s behalf. In fact, his prosecution in the United States was reported to have sparked an outcry from Venezuela’s government and activists in the U.S., with his defence team embarking on a concerted legal effort to get the case against him dismissed in federal court.
There are many questions that beg for answers in the manner Cabo Verde handled this matter and the circumstances in which it extradited Saab to the US notwithstanding the absence of an extradition treaty between the two countries. And also notwithstanding that both the ECOWAS Court and the United Nations human Rights Commission (UNHRC) asked Cape Verde to suspend the extradition of Saab to the US at the time.
It is also curious that US prosecutors appear unable to provide any concrete evidence of the charges against him since he got into their custody in 2021.
Whatever deal the US had with Cabo Verde that made it mandatory for Cabo Verde to do the bidding of the US against all odds must have been too good to reject.
@Centre for Community Law, January, 2024

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STRENGTHENING AND REPOSITIONING ECOWAS FOR EMERGING CHALLENGES

Guest — Thu, 21 Dec 2023 12:37:10 +0000

STRENGTHENING AND REPOSITIONING ECOWAS FOR EMERGING CHALLENGES
Center for Community Law

*Paul Ejime

In less than two years, (2025), the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) will mark its Golden Jubilee Anniversary. Given the high rate of turnover of similar regional organisations vis-a-vis its achievements, especially in the domain of preventive diplomacy, conflict management and resolution since its establishment in May 1975, even hardline critics will not deny ECOWAS its due credit.
However, faced with a combination of factors in recent years, particularly bad governance, poverty, and corruption, compounded by the crisis of globalising liberal democracy, the collapse of multilateralism and the rise of multipolarities and asymmetric threat vectors, such as terrorism, cyber warfare and social media, the West African regional bloc has found itself struggling to even meet its own standards.
Leadership deficit at the national and regional levels is only part of the problem. Most telling and unresolved is the chronic lack of institutional capacity, which features prominently in the reports of external stakeholders and ECOWAS development partners.
With an estimated staff strength of under 2,000, including less than 70 Directors servicing the organisation’s 14 Specialised Agencies and six Institutions, including the Commission, ECOWAS is grossly understaffed in quality and quantity of hands-on technocrats.
This translates to a lack of absorptive capacity, which limits its ability to fully utilise available resources or attract more funding for the coordination and implementation of critical and strategic programmes and policies to deepen cohesion and progressively eliminate identified barriers to the full integration of the more than 400 million Community.
To compound matters, the organisation only returned recently to a seven-Commissioner structure made up of the Offices of the President, Vice-President, and five Commissioners overseeing more than 26 Directorates, Divisions, and administrative Units.
Until last year, the regional leaders had in their wisdom, expanded the organisation to a 15-Commissioner structure with the attendant drain on human and financial resources.
The lack of dynamic and visionary technocrats means that ECOWAS, once applauded for its forward-looking and proactive policies and engagements, has become increasingly ineffective and on the verge of losing relevance.
The tragic consequences of leadership failure coincided with the lack of independent-mindedness and the required ‘supranationalism’ of actions/decisions at the level of the Commission, coupled with an accelerated retreat of democracy in the region.
Four of the 15-nation regional bloc are now under military dictatorships from 2020, with three – Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger, forming a Cooperation and Defence Alliance, short of withdrawal from ECOWAS.
The gap in critical thinking at the Commission has left the Heads of State with a field day without stabilising and nuanced inputs from skilled technocrats.
In a bid to address the manpower shortfall, previous managements had resorted to ad-hoc recruitments, following the embargo placed on wholesale employment.
But the problem has persisted with some staff members complaining about unfairness, lack of transparency or alleged bias in favour of either of the ECOWAS three language groups – French, English, and Portuguese.
Consequently, the President Omar Alieu Touray-led ECOWAS Commission Management, which assumed office in July 2022, is in the process of conducting a new recruitment exercise.
But even before its commencement, the exercise has generated an unnecessary controversy as a result of Management’s position that new recruitment at the Commission would be limited to internal staff, such that vacant positions would not be advertised.
The Civil Society Network Against Corruption (CSNAC) is among NGOs and independent observers that have faulted this decision.
The CSNAC in a widely publicised petition to the Commission has threatened to challenge the decision, which it described as violating ECOWAS Revised Treaty and Staff Regulations, at the ECOWAS Court of Justice.
In particular, the Network drew the Commission’s attention to Article 18(5) of the ECOWAS Revised Treaty of 1993, which stipulates that “in appointing professional staff for the Community, due regard shall be subject to ensuring the highest standards of efficiency and technical competence, to maintaining equitable geographical distribution of posts and gender balance among nationals of all Member States (pgs. 64-65:1993).”
It also argues that the decision contravenes Article 9(2b) of the ECOWAS Staff Regulations, which stipulates that “all permanent professional positions declared vacant shall be advertised. Applicants shall be notified of the receipt of application for the positions advertised. The deadline for receipt of applications shall be forty-five (45) calendar days after the date of publication.”
Furthermore, the Network quoted Article 9(c) of the Staff Regulations, which “states that (vacant) positions shall be filled through a competitive recruitment process in which all shortlisted candidates shall appear before the relevant Committee (pg. 14).”
It reminded the Commission President, “that as primary custodian of all ECOWAS regulations, laws and policies, he should not be perceived to be condoning any forms of illegality.”
The Network, therefore, demands “rescindment of the illegal position of denying qualified community citizens, including the current staff of the ECOWAS Commission, the right to apply and be considered for professional positions at the ECOWAS Commission.”
“Failure to do this will compel us to approach the …ECOWAS Community Court of Justice, in order to compel the ECOWAS Commission to do what is fair and just to all,” it added.
Sources at the Commission have explained that the recruitment could be opened to external candidates in cases where internal candidates did not fit the skill set.
However, independent analysts and sources at the ECOWAS Court of Justice all agree that the standard practice, which is consistent with ECOWAS instrumentalities is to advertise vacant positions, with a proviso that due consideration would be accorded internal candidates under specific circumstances.
The Commission President probably meant well, as part of efforts to boost waning staff morale, even so, recruitments take unnecessarily long periods and cost money in the ECOWAS system. A controversial decision involving splitting the process into phases will not only cost more but will defeat the purpose of urgently filling critical positions.
Furthermore, any recruitment exercise that is perceived as discriminatory will be against the principles of natural justice, equity, and fairness.
Another counterargument is that the present “internal staff,” could not have gained employment in ECOWAS if recruitment had not been externalised.
ECOWAS has to inject fresh blood into its foundering system, and for its personnel to perform at optimum, they must be of the highest calibre of competencies and proficiency. This is the only way to retool and reposition the regional bloc to address emerging challenges effectively.
This position is consistent with the Touray-led management’s “4×4 Strategic Objectives – Enhanced Peace and Security, Deepening Regional Integration, Good Governance and, Inclusive and Sustainable Development” – as well as ECOWAS Fundamental Principles of “Equality and inter-dependence of Member States,” and “Equitable and just distribution of the costs and benefits of economic co-operation and integration.”
It is also in tandem with the new Vision of moving from an ECOWAS of States to an “ECOWAS of the People: “…a borderless region where the population has access to its abundant resources … (and is) governed in accordance with the principles of democracy, the rule of law and good governance.”
Proceeding with a controversial recruitment process will only open the floodgate for costly and unnecessary lawsuits against the Commission, at this critical juncture of ECOWAS’ history.
*Paul Ejime is a Global Affairs Analyst and Consultant on Peace & Security and Governance Communications

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