The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) is a regional organisation of the West African states. It was founded in 1975, five years after the end of the Nigeria/Biafra war. The organisation was initially made up of 15 member- states of the Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Togo. Others are Cote d’Ivoire, Benin, Mauritania and Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso) It had a mandate of promoting economic integration and shared development of West African sub-region.

ECOWAS has over the years recorded successes but it has equally been beset by what some analysts describe as strategic flaws caused by many political and policy decisions of some member-states. The regional economic integration has not been a complete success given that the region is still impacted by some colonial and post-colonial structural hurdles. The region does not yet have a common currency. The Franco-phone and Anglo-phone political strategies differ a lot and not much synergy has been achieved.

However, the greatest achievement of the regional body has been the Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group (ECOMOG), a West African multilateral armed force established by mainly Anglophone West Africa in 1990, to intervene in the Liberia civil war. ECOMOG’s interventions in Liberia and Sierra Leone were largely successful and globally applauded.

However, since ECOMOG’s intervention in Sierra Leone and Liberia, there has been no major collaborative work from ECOMOG for other regional conflicts. However, Nigeria, a huge contributor to ECOWAS, has as the ‘big brother’ in the region had to intervene in Darfur conflict as observers/peacekeeper. The President of Nigeria had intervened in the Gambia political crisis to reach a resolution easing out former President Yaya Jammeh.

Recently though, three countries, Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso resigned from ECOWAS over issues relating to the unconstitutional military governments that seized power in the three Franco-phone countries. This came at a time the sub-region had been facing a myriad of security and economic problems. Nigeria has for long been battling the Boko-Haram problems in addition to other terror groups. Mali and Burkina Faso have been conflict-ridden as different terror groups and internal power conflicts pitch groups against each other.

There have been issues of terrorism across the region, resulting in political instability and economic stagnation. Even though ECOWAS has the Early Warning and Response Partnership (EWARP) that supports information sharing, conflict prevention and crisis management among West African States, the impact of terrorism on member-states seem to be worsening, and with it the dire socio-economic consequences.

It is therefore a welcome development that ECOWAS plans to establish an ECOWAS standby force to aid the region in combating terrorism. The organisation seeks to raise $2.4 billion for the exercise as announced by the body’s commissioner in charge of political affairs, peace and security, Abdel-Fatau Musah, last week, at the opening of a three-day consultative meeting of the commandants of the three designated ECOWAS Training Centres of Excellence, in Abuja. He feels that the region must feel scandalised that Burkina Faso has overtaken Afghanistan as the most terrorised country.

While we commend the proposal, we are concerned about the huge amount needed to start and sustain the force. We suggest that the members can make contributions for initial take-off and possibly appeal to international bodies for support because it is a project for the long term. Sourcing intelligence, training of the members of the force and other logistic requirements must be taken into consideration to make it a sustainable force.

ECOWAS must take terrorism in the region very seriously given the impact the region is already feeling with the myriad of terror attacks in some flash points in the region. No country can be productively viable when terrorist attacks become a stumbling block. Internal productivity would go down and foreign direct investment would decrease, making it impossible for sustainable development. A regional economic group must be concerned about the reason for its establishment, ab initio. They must take cues from other regional and sub-continental bodies that are actively fighting illegal immigration, and by extension terrorism, through policies.

We also suggest that ECOWAS must revisit its mandate and try to resuscitate some of the plans for economic integration in ways that terrorist tendencies can be curbed before they even start. Terrorism, from studies, has diverse operational manifestations. The states must individually try internal mechanisms that can be reinforced through the regional force.

On its own, the force might fail if certain strategic and tactical mechanisms do not precede the formation. Again ECOWAS must fight for unity across the states for any such force to be functional and sustainable.

It must also try to see where ECOWAS missed it and try as much as possible to do the necessary corrections so that the proposed force would not go the way of ECOMOG, even before its take-off. It should not be dead before, or on arrival.

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