The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) cannot end the military coups that are now becoming popular in the region under the current multipolar global system, the bloc’s Commissioner for Political Affairs, Peace and Security, Ambassador Abdel-Fatau Musah has said.
Ambassador Musah, who spoke while presenting the outcome of regional consultations ahead of a special summit on the future of West African integration, was responding to ECOWAS parliamentarians who wanted to know what would stop the recurring coups within the bloc.
Musah recalled that after the 2012 coup in Mali, ECOWAS intervened within days, successfully establishing a transition. Elections were held just over a year later, bringing Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta to power in 2013.
However, the Commissioner acknowledged that the geopolitical landscape has fundamentally changed.
“At that time, the threat of force alone was enough to bring any coup-hit nation back to the fold,” he explained. “Then, the United States was the only superpower. China was economically weak, and Russia had disintegrated.
“If ECOWAS said ‘we are suspending you, you have to hand over, otherwise you cannot go back’ – there was no country in the world to support the coup plotters. Not China, not Russia at that time. We had a unipolar world,” he said.
According to Musah, the shift began with the assassination of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. “That is when multipolarity dawned on Africa. It has moved on gradually, and today, if military people stage a coup, the U.S. may say ‘we are against,’ China says ‘we support,’ and Russia says something different.”
As a result, he argued, “ECOWAS’ power under a multipolar system to force member states to hand over is limited. That is why it should be the role of the citizens in the country.”
Musah insisted that ECOWAS should never abandon democracy, rejecting the notion that democracy is a foreign culture.
“Africa had democracy long before the slave trade,” he said. “Our democracy was far more advanced than many of these European countries. Again, our women were key decision-makers – all before this gender parity theory came up. You have it written all across West Africa.”
The Commissioner said the region’s challenge is to adapt democracy to local needs, adding: “We need to empower citizens, women, young people. There is no way some of us would support a military coup.”
