ECOWAS FIRST APPROACH TO THE NIGER CRISIS IS IN ITSELF A FAILURE

By Sulayman Lecturer Darboe 

ECOWAS FIRST APPROACH TO THE NIGER CRISIS IS IN ITSELF A FAILURE

Foremost, I want to express explicitly that I am not in any way justifying the Military Coup in Niger just like I heavily frowned at Alpha Conde's constitutional coup in Conakry. However, one expects that the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) as a regional entity under the leadership of Nigeria's unsettled President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, would use  better and productive approaches premised on  conclusive analysis of the Niger crisis in order to establish a decision that is of its interest, the sub-region, and Niger in particular. But sadly, just few days after the pronouncement of the Military Coup, the seemingly toothless dragon—ECOWAS, met in Lagos and swiftly settled with launching a military intervention on Niger should the Junta insist to respond to their demand of reinstating the outed President Mohamed Bazoum. What actually was ECOWAS thinking that it swiftly arrived at a such decision without deeply analyzing the Crisis to understand what happened and what is at stake?

Strongly, I firmly believe this was where ECOWAS got it all wrong because a region with rich history of Military Coups in the past with little or no efforts of forcefully reinstating past outed presidents by ECOWAS can only have such a detested trajectory changed through domestic and local strategies such as respect for term limits, introducing policies and programs that do not feed outside at the expense of the impoverished people especially around resources, dialogues and mediations etc, but not through the use force. Furthermore, It is equally important to clearly express that force is not the solution to ending Military Coups in Africa and ECOWAS in its genuine bid to reinstate  President Basoum do not have any guarantee that with force, he will be reinstated. Instead, ECOWAS intervention will destabilize the sub-region and may even lead to the death of Basoum in the hands of  the  Military. 

It may sound irrelevant, but all indications are fast-appearing that ECOWAS is leading Africa to a proxy war between the West-backed ECOWAS  and Russia-backed Junta  forces in brutal classes over the reinstatement of President Basoum and the  restoration of their defined so-called democratic civilian rule under which mass exploitation and puppet governance has arguably characterized Niger as firmly believed by the Niger's Military Junta.

It is important for ECOWAS to revisit its decision of Military Intervention in Niger because there's absolutely no form of aggression or need for such. What should even make ECOWAS take another route to this crisis is the fact that with deep analysis, one will understand that there will be no winner in the end and Africa will be faced with more political, social and economic challenges and severe insecurities plus rise in militia and terrorist groups.

Therefore, ECOWAS must see the Military Coup in Niger as an internal problem and all that should be done is to help push for strategies that will force the Junta to peaceful transition to civilian rule as soon as possible. That ought to be the interest of ECOWAS, the subregion and Niger and not any so-called Military Intervention capable of killing the outed himself and civilians.