For much of last week our federal capital of Abuja was agog with delegations from all over the world for the summit of the Authority of Heads of State and Government of the Economic Community of West Africa (ECOWAS). The summit marked the 48th Ordinary Session of the summit of ECOWAS leaders. But it was also dedicated to the 40th anniversary of the founding of the regional body. The leaders of our West African community members were there in full force, in addition to president of the African Union, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, representatives of the UN Secretary-General, other international and regional agencies and the bilateral development partners, in addition to NGOs, the media and other stakeholders. The mammoth and extortionately priced Transcorp Hilton, the venue of the event, was jam-packed to the brim.
Nigeria, the host of the event, was its usual generous self. Nobody does it better than us when it comes to hosting visitors. But in fairness to the Buhari administration, the hosting was generous but not lavish, as befits these lean years in which we find ourselves in the Kondratieff Curve of economic fortunes. In his welcome speech, President Buhari noted the progress that the regional body has made. He singled out the progress made in consolidating democracy, in particular, the successful elections that have been conducted this year in Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Guinea and Côte d’Ivoire and Togo. Apart from the menace of climate change, he singled out terrorism and transnational crime as the twin most pressing challenges facing ECOWAS at present. He urged West African leaders to intensify cooperation and joint regional surveillance as the most effective way of curbing the menace.
For much of the year, there has been an outpouring of writing celebrating ECOWAS at 40. Much of it has been upbeat and uncritical. It is not too difficult to see why. Our own ECOWAS has been the most successful regional economic community in the continent, trailed by the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the East African Community (EAC). West Africa is also the fastest growing region in Africa, with an average regional growth rate of 5.2 percent over the past three years.
Established by force of the Treaty of Lagos in May 1975, ECOWAS was championed by Nigerian military leader General Yakubu Gowon and his friend late President Gnassingbé Eyadema of Togo. Coming out of a bloody civil war, Gowon appreciated the role that having good neighbours makes to his country’s peace and prosperity. He sought an ever larger union in which Nigeria and her regional neighbours could prosper together.
Throughout these 40 years, the organization has experienced its ups and downs, like any other regional organization. Until recently, our West Africa region was the scene for the most sanguinary wars that were fought on the continent. Liberia and Sierra Leone fought savage wars in which child soldiers were deployed on a large scale and men saw nothing amiss in chopping off the hands of women and children. Nigeria played a decisive role in deploying the regional peacekeeping organization, ECOMOG, in restoring peace to both Sierra Leone and Liberia. We spent close to US$10 billion in securing the peace. It came at a huge cost in terms of lives of our brave young soldiers. Nigeria lost over 5,000 young men in those primeval jungles. I reminded a Liberian minister not too long ago that the very first Nigerian army casualty in Liberia was a young man from my own home town in Sanga Local Government of Kaduna State.
ECOWAS has also been successful in building an effective conflict-resolution mechanism in restoring hope to such fractious countries as Côte d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Guinea-Bissau and Togo.
Our regional body has also been effective in building a framework for consolidating democracy. West Africa led the rest of the continent in developing regional norms totally outlawing unconstitutional usurpation of power by the army or anyone else. It has become increasingly difficult for the military to seize power by force in any West African country today. Their chances of success would be quite minimal and their acceptability, zero. This is truly real progress on our slow march towards consolidating democracy in our sub-region.
Linked to this is effectiveness of the regional election-monitoring machinery. ECOWAS leads other regions in the successful monitoring of elections. When it comes to West Africa, the UN agencies, the Commonwealth and other regional bodies follow the lead of ECOWAS in their assessment of the success or failure of democratic elections in our region.
But ECOWAS faces several crucial challenges. Although much progress has been made in freeing up the restrictions on the movement of people through the mechanism of the West African passport, we have been less successful in promoting the free movements of goods and capital. The West African payments system is yet to be fully operational. There has been much talk about a West African Stock Exchange, but we are yet to see real progress in the integration of our capital markets. A trailer driver moving from Lagos to Abidjan will face possibly 1,000 obstacles before he gets to his final destination. I once decided to do a West African adventure from Abidjan to Lagos by road. The problems we faced were nightmarish. Arrogant and extortionate customs and immigration officials made sure we saw hell at every opportunity. I would not in all honesty encourage anyone to ever try that adventure. As far as I am concerned, the real test of a successful regional community is if you can drive your car throughout all the frontiers of the community without any hindrance whatsoever. When you drive across Europe, you never seem to know the moment when you cross the French, Belgian, Dutch or Luxembourgish borders. Most of the time there are no customs or immigration officers on the borders. A true community is a borderless community. In that sense, ECOWAS is not yet a genuine regional economic community.
There is also the challenge of regional trade. The much celebrated ECOWAS Common External Tariff (CET) took off last year with much fanfare. Hardly do people realise that much of it was driven by pressures from the European Union and our negotiations on the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs). Even as the proposals came up a few years ago, Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire signed their interim EPAs with the EU to guarantee continuing access for their commodity exports. Nigeria has dragged its feet over signing off the agreement with Europe because it worries over the likely deleterious impact on his agriculture and fledgling manufacturing sector. Within ECOWAS itself, regional trade remains at a low 16 percent of their total external trade. The West African Gas Pipeline and the projected West African Highway and planned rail system are important signposts, of course. A successful regional community must enhance trade creation as well as convergence. We are, sadly, still a long way towards attaining those objectives.
The project to create a single currency in the region has taken more than a decade in the making. The West African Monetary Institute (WAMI), which spearheads the project, has been reduced to churning out technical papers that nobody ever reads. But of the problem was challenge faced by the Euro. During the last couple of years the chronic recession that befell Europe put capital question marks on the future of the Euro as a regional currency. During the course of this year Greece stood within a hair’s breadth of being thrown out of the monetary union. Had this been allowed, it would irreparably damage the integrity of the euro as an international currency, leading perhaps to its ultimate dissolution. For regional communities with ambitions of monetary union, the omens were not particularly good.
During my time at the CBN, I must confess that we worried about carrying the huge burden of underwriting the monetary base of our neighbours some of whose currencies were virtually worthless. There is also the challenge of the Franc Zone, where French imperialism maintains its stranglehold on the West African CFA. It is astonishing that in our day and age, a European country can monopolise the issuance of a currency for a set of “independent” African countries while its Treasury authorizes how they can spend their foreign reserves. French control over its West African territories remains deep and pernicious. The situation hasn’t changed very much. Under the circumstances, my humble view is that we in Nigeria should work towards making the naira a strong and internationally convertible currency. Once that is done, we could aim to make it the de facto currency for the region.
In looking towards the future, our approach to ECOWAS must be approached in the overall framework of our exercise of leadership on the continent. Thankfully, the guns are falling silent throughout our continent of Africa. Democracy is gradually taking root. Africa remains a region of strong growth prospects in spite of a bleak global economic environment. Africa possesses 50 percent of the world’s known strategic minerals. Some of the world powers are deeply avaricious about those natural resources. Imperialism and neo-colonialism is still a grim reality in our benighted continent, considering failed states such as DRC and the Central African Republic (CAR).
For us in Nigeria, we need to build a strong coalition that will enable us exercise the leadership that is our manifest destiny. We should seek more creative and low-key approaches to exercising leadership in a manner that is not perceived to be arrogant or over-bearing. Many of our African countries, particularly our own Francophone members in ECOWAS, have had this annoying reflex action of ganging-up immediately the name Nigeria is mentioned at any African or international forum. Countries like Niger, Chad and Benin are dependent on us economically. We should explore ways neutralising any gang-up that our neighbours champion when it involves our national interests through a mix of incentives and disincentives. We should make it economically costly for them to challenge us whenever our fundamental national interests are at stake.
I admire the ancient Chinese who exercise power with self-effacing guile. For them, leadership is not about flexing muscles. It is more effectively about the exercise of what the Harvard political scientist Joseph Nye termed “soft power”. It is about intellectual leadership, about political wisdom and the use of money and investment power in tackling poverty and dealing with some of the intractable challenges our African nations face. It is also about the quality of the men – and we must aim to have more women ambassadors – who speak for us in regional, continental and other international forums.
In driving the leadership process in Africa, we should reach out to South Africa as our principal partner on the continent. Just as the France-Germany partnership is central to the European integration process, we believe that our partnership with South Africa should drive the leadership process in our continent. It is obvious that much of the “cobwebs” will need to be cleared up. There is a residual xenophobia that afflicts large sections of the South African society. Nigerians and other foreigners in South Africa have been at the receiving end of violent anti-foreigner sentiments. But we have to look beyond that. Our economic relations remain strong. The South Africans need our market while we need their capital and technology. There is a mutually of shared interests here. Other countries that we should consider pivotal partners are Côte d’Ivoire in West Africa, Angola in Southern Africa, and Kenya and Ethiopia in East Africa. In North Africa, we should also build strong partnerships with Egypt and with Algeria.
As observed at the beginning, ECOWAS emerged as an initiative of General Yakubu Gowon of Nigeria and General Gnassingbé Eyadema of Togo. The presence of the Secretariat in Abuja has been good for our country. But unfortunately, the organization keeps an unhealthy distance from its host community. Nigerians employed by the organization complain of all sorts of discrimination.
ECOWAS is generally considered the most successful example of regional cooperation in Africa, thanks to Nigeria’s guidance and leadership. Nigeria continues to finance over 75 percent of the operating budget, unfortunately, without the requisite level of influence within that regional body. It is imperative that we extract our money’s worth in ECOWAS in terms of influence, representation and economic benefits. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher did the same for Britain in Europe, until she secured her money’s worth for her country.
Nigeria used to provide up to 80 percent of the assessed contributions from automatic customs deductions. We do not think this trend should continue. There is no regional organization in the world that we know of, where one country shoulders the burdens of single-handedly coughing out as much as even 40 percent of the contributions, late alone 80 percent. In 2013, for example, out of a total EU operating budget of €150 billion, Germany, the biggest economy in the region, paid €28 billion as its assessed contributions, amounting to 18.7 percent of the total. What is also strange is that the amount that Nigeria pays is automatically deducted. If it is in excess of the budgetary requirements, it is kept in an envelope to be accessed for community-wide actions. A good number of the Francophone countries do not keep up even in the payments of their miniscule assessed obligations.
Meanwhile, these countries operate a separate Francophone economic grouping (CEAO) that looks after their interests under the control and hegemony of the French. What is worse, Nigeria has never enjoyed any level of influence within the administration of ECOWAS that is commensurate with our financial sacrifices. It is a highly iniquitous and unconscionable arrangement that needs to be drastically revised.
Finally, it is imperative that the Ministry of Trade and Industry comes up with a more vigorous regional and international trade policy. Many among the educated public do not realise that there is an insidious and undeclared “trade war” against our country. During the early part of this year, ECOWAS had virtually reached an agreement at technical level on the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) with the EU. Nigeria did not ratify because we felt the EPA provisions will not serve the interest of our fledgling manufacturing sector. This has evoked the anger of the EU. Suddenly, they found out that our primary products such as cocoa, palm oil and others do not meet “European standards”. The EU and the West have also been angered by the Central Bank of Nigeria decision to ban some 41 products from access to the official foreign exchange window. As we understand it, the matter is already being tabled before the tribunal of the World Trade Organisation (WTO).
As far as we know, Nigeria does not have a strong and vigorous international trade policy. We seem to be operating on an ad hoc basis. We fail to realise that, in our globalized and complex international economic system, trade is the new form of warfare. Nations that fail in their trade diplomacy are doomed while those that succeed will reap the benefits in terms of enhanced livelihoods and collective welfare.
Finally, ECOWAS seems to me too much of an affair of governments with little or no participation by the private sector and civil society. I would like to see the likes of Dangote being well represented in those meetings. We need a strong voice for industry and the private sector in the way ECOWAS works. We also need the voice of civil society and their participation in how we are governed in our regional community. We need nothing less than ECOWAS of the people.
Obadiah Mailafia
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