Dr. Mohamed Ibn Chambas
Last Saturday, the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre (KAIPTC) was venue of a symposium to commemorate the 75th birthday of Ghanaian diplomat Dr. Mohamed Ibn Chambas.
The remarks and observations from West Africa’s security researchers and analysts at the engagement have provoked thoughts about the future of the troubled sub-region.
Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Femi Falana, one of the panelists of the carefully selected contributors to the symposium, talked about the dearth of quality leadership in the sub-region and how this is responsible for the sorry state of the sub-region.
Of course, as he noted, today’s leaders in the sub-region are incomparable to those at the helm in the latter part of the 1950s to the 60s.
Selflessness, the main attribute of the leaders of the aforementioned period, has fled through the window.
Mismanagement of the economies of the sub-region has encouraged military adventurists with no clue as to what to do to reverse the order to give democracy a bad name and hang it through equally unproductive coups.
We cannot but agree with him that, if we want democracy and peace to thrive in the component countries of the sub-region, we must manage our economies with integrity and bereft of corruption.
Pointing at the existence of just a few seemingly stable countries in the sub-region, he particularly pointed at Guinea Bissau as coup-prone, noting how Nigeria escaped one recently.
West Africa is at the crossroads and unless something is done and soonest about enhancing the principles of democracy and proper management of the economies, the military adventurists ruling Mali, Guinea, Guinea Bissau and Niger will poison the political ambience of the sub-region by presenting coups as better options.
Today, the image of the Burkinabe strongman is common in some parts of West Africa, Ghana included.
The man has been able to create the impression that he is solving the challenges of his country; with Russian support as his counterpart in Mali. We must be watchful about the fallouts. Artificial Intelligence (AI)-generated videos show the man who hardly speaks English using that language to spread his propaganda incitingly, however, naive youth admire him.
A day had barely elapsed since the presentation of Lawyer Falana when an attempted coup was reported in Benin.
ECOWAS has announced the deployment of its standby force to support the friendly forces in the Francophone country.
Sounds interesting because the same standby force could not be deployed to Guinea Bissau when on the eve of a major election release a coup was announced.
What ECOWAS should be doing is to find out how best it can ensure that economies are not only managed well and for the good of all, but that constitutions, especially term limits, are not altered to give sitting leaders extra term as in Cote d’Ivoire.
Today, Togo as noted by the Nigerian lawyer has Eyadema II, a reality sounding like a monarchical arrangement.
Would ECOWAS send a standby force to Togo should there be an uprising in this dictatorial ambience?