News:
May 15, 2023
Chairman of the Political Affairs, Peace, Security and African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Parliament, Senator Edwin Melvin Snowe Junior has revealed that study is being conducted into the rampant coup in the West Africa sub-region.
According to him the study has not arrived at the exact cause of coups in West Africa ; but there are three scenarios – in Mali the election took place successfully, but the ruling party tried to temper with the result of the Parliamentary elections that resulted in what we see now.
He not in an interview that the coup in Burkina Faso, according to the military the government was not doing much to fight the insurgence from the Sahel region, so they over threw the government.
And in Guinea the president tempered with the constitution to seek a third term in office and he was overthrown.
“So we have three scenarios, now in the case of Senegal we are having a new situation there. There is crackdown on the opposition; we are going to study what is happening in the region and see how best we can put our hands on the issues”.
Again, Nigeria has just had election which is our big democracy in the sub region and what happened, the opposition that was aggrieved went to the court which is rule of law and we are asking other west African countries to follow and emulate the example of Nigeria.
“If we have problem let us take it to the court and challenge it but we would get to a point where we would discontinue the situation where we have takeovers in our sub region”.
At the ongoing 2023 first Ordinary Session in Abuja Nigeria where some ECOWAS Parliament lawmakers have said the bloc is not doing much, he pointed out that sometimes its function is being misconstrued stating that per the function of ECOWAS, it is not a police barracks; rather it solidarizes – “it works together in bringing states together; it respects individual state sovereignty and the rule of law”.
“Can ECOWAS come to Nigeria and tell it how to run its government or country?We expect that people will go by civilized norms; ECOWAS can only encourage you to do the right thing. Yes there should have been times that ECOWAS should have spoken a bit louder earlier but we did not do, those are some of the things that would come out in the case study”.
Again, ECOWAS cannot come to Nigeria today and say you have to organise your elections again because it is being challenged, ECOWAS would have to follow the rules of member sovereign states.
On the current situation in his home country ahead of its general election in the course of the year, he noted that Liberia is fully prepared for its election and the fact that government is fully sponsoring the elections and has paid ninety percent of the budget.
In addition, biometric registration process is over and ended successfully. They are five from Liberia, and out of the five three are from the opposition.
On the issue of the political temperature, he affirmed that like any other country the temperature is high in election year and the situation is not different, but so far it’s going well.
Kwaku Sakyi-Danso/Ghanamps.com