ECOWAS Parliament: legislating its way to legitimacy
By Victoria Ojeme
The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) was created in 1975 by the Treaty of Lagos (ECOWAS Treaty). The creation of an ECOWAS Parliament came almost 20 years later, when it was formed alongside other Community institutions with the revision of the ECOWAS Treaty in 1993.
Established by Article 13 of the ECOWAS Revised Treaty, the Community Parliament was established with a mandate to provide advice to the Community on a variety of integration issues, ranging from respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, through public health policies and interconnection of telecommunication and energy networks, to youth and sports, among other things.
It took a further six years before the first legislature of the Community Parliament was officially inaugurated in Bamako (Mali) in November 2000.
The Parliament is composed of one hundred and fifteen (115) seats. Each Member State has a guaranteed minimum of five seats. The remaining forty seats are shared on the basis of population.
As noted earlier, the First Legislature of the parliament was inaugurated in Bamako, Mali with a five-year mandate (16 November 2000 to 5 October 2005). Professor Ali Nouhoum Diallo was elected the first Speaker. That same year, the Authority of Heads of State and Government directed the ECOWAS Commission and Parliament to present proposals on the enhancement of Parliament’s powers, in the hope that the next legislature would be the last one with only an advisory capacity.
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Following the restructuring of ECOWAS Institutions by the Authority of Heads of State and Government in 2006, in which the life span of the Legislature was reduced to four years, the Second Legislature was inaugurated on 11 November 2006, under the leadership of Mahamane Ousmane from the Republic of Niger. The Legislature lasted until 10th November, 2010.
This legislature formed an ad hoc committee to work on proposals of parliamentary restructuring including study visits to other regional Parliaments, such as the East Africa Legislative Assembly (EALA), which is one of the few regional parliaments in Africa with legislative powers, and the European Parliament. Though reports and recommendations were made on the enhancement process, the term of the second legislature ended without their implementation.
The Third Legislature was inaugurated on 8 August 2011 with Ike Ekweremadu from Nigeria as the Speaker of Parliament. This legislature immediately set up an ad hoc committee to – once more – work on enhancing its powers. After one year of work, the committee submitted a Draft Supplementary Act (DSA) to the Plenary, which it proposed would replace all preceding legislation governing the Community Parliament.
Ekweremadu during his tenure advocated that Parliament needed to move to a higher status and called on the ECOWAS Authority of Heads of State and Government to accelerate the processes of making the Community’s Parliament a full-blown legislative institution.
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The parliament also took action to end the crisis associated with herdsmen seasonal migration the region.
During the three days ECOWAS Parliamentary Seminar on Transhumance and Intercommunity conflicts in the ECOWAS Region, held at Monrovia, Liberia in November 2019, parliament agreed on workable plans to that effect.
Stakeholders including national governments, regional organizations like the ECOWAS Commission, Regional and National Legislative Assemblies, Farmer and Livestock Organizations, Private Sector, and Civil Society Organizations were urged to join hands in solving this menace that has engulfed the region.
The Parliament after the three days interactions with resource persons and extensive debate stated that transhumance and the conflict between herdsmen and farmers is a very complex and intricate issue.
They added that the effect has been compounded by the penetration of bandits, criminals, kidnappers and terrorists who have access to small arms and light weapons, which they use to carryout deadly criminal activities, resulting to deaths and property destruction.
In the light of that, parliament urged member states to create budget heads to carter for internally displaced persons (IDPs) and refugees in the region.
International policy analysts, Linda Boré and Felix Henkel writing on the ECOWAS Parliament‘s Rocky Road to Co-Decision observed that ECOWAS is an institution strongly dominated by the Executive arguing that the Community Parliament has to date been unable to counterbalance this power because of its weak mandate.
“One major criticism both from within and outside ECOWAS is that from its birth, the Community Parliament was quite a weak institution and a Parliament only in name because it lacked legislative capacity and, with it, the ability to influence policy. Secondly, the advisory procedure was not mandatory. Hence, Community institutions could choose whether or not to adopt opinions delivered by Parliament,” Boré and Henkel said.
Granted, giving Parliament a greater say maybe a challenging diplomatic endeavour as in the case of the European Union parliament, it nonetheless serves what Immanuel Kant and Alexis de Tocqueville called “self-interest rightly understood”, as it increases the transparency, accountability and legitimacy of the Community Parliament and of ECOWAS as a whole.
A more effective parliament will, in essence, help to address the fundamental challenge in present-day West Africa, namely, to bridge the gap between the people and their institutions.
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