PROPERA LENTE: POSITION STATEMENT ON INTERVENTIONS OF ECOWAS IN NIGER AFTER THE COUP

The military coup in Niger has trapped ECOWAS in a conundrum that risks destroying its legitimacy and credibility, at least in the eyes of its citizens in its member francophone countries. ECOWAS, like all other multi-state institutions, is built on rules. Hence, ECOWAS must be seen to walk the talk because its existence and continued relevance depend on its ability to enforce the rules that hold it together. Its motive for intervening in Niger to restore democratic rule is in conformity with its protocol of opposing subversions of democratic governance by unelected persons or groups. Hence, this is not the first time that it has intervened to bring peace and stability or secure commitments in one of its member states. It went to war to restore peace in Liberia and Sierra Leone in the 1980s and early 90s; its threat of use of force in The Gambia prevented Yaya Jammeh from dismissing electoral results to remain in power; and its engagement with putschists in, Burkina Faso, Guinea Bissau, Guinea, and Mali secured yet to be fulfilled commitments to peaceful transitions to democratic rule.

The feet dragging in the transition processes in the aforementioned countries suggest that the stakes are different and ever-changing. The current coup d’états in the Sahel come with a different flavor to their agendas. The soldiers who took power in Mali, Burkina Faso, and now Niger may not have cited France’s suffocating neocolonialist policies as the trigger factor for their actions. However, they have successfully spun a populist narrative that cites the failure of France to halt the threat of violent extremism. They have used this as a launchpad to leverage growing anti-France sentiments of citizens increasingly exasperated by their growing poverty in the face of visible monopoly and manipulative management of their natural resources wealth whose exploitation has not benefitted them. Hence, although the usual justifications for the corruption of politicians in the midst of failure to deliver development may have been the initial excuses for the coups, playing on citizens’ dissatisfaction with the inability of France to guarantee their security from attacks by violent extremists have given a new flavor and impetus to the excuses the military have for seizing power.

The perceived failure of France to address these security concerns has stoked long-harbored but suppressed grievances of ordinary people on the role of France in their lives – the perception that part of the lack of political and economic independence and development in the Francophone countries is due to the stranglehold that France, their colonial master, has had on them since independence. Accordingly, the current wave of coup d’états in the francophone Sahel is no longer about getting rid of corrupt and ineffective politicians, they are increasingly perceived as the opportunity to get rid of the puppeteering hold that France has on the political and economic development of their countries. Against this background, ECOWAS must realize that intervening in Niger is not a simple matter of getting rid of the coup makers and placing the elected president back in his seat. On the contrary, the region faces a situation in which the rules it is playing by may not fit the context. This presents unanticipated risks if the rules are invoked without reference to the context. In the aforementioned instances, ECOWAS threatened or went to war on the side of the people. This time around, ECOWAS may not be on the side of the people.

The context is different because the narrative that the coup makers are reconstructing to justify the coup d’états is different. The narrative is no longer about individual political actors; it is about confronting and dealing with deep rooted historical and systemic injustices that have perpetuated poverty for the ordinary people in the Sahel. While other non-francophone ECOWAS member states may not be leaps and bounds ahead of their francophone neighbors in their political and economic development, their freedom to (mis)manage their own affairs is nonetheless the source of envy for their francophone counterparts. One only has to travel to these countries and get into conversations with ordinary citizens – young people, community level people (with some travel experience outside their countries), long-haul truck drivers, traders, taxi drivers, etc. to hear and sense their feeling about the stranglehold that they believe France has on them. That sense of frustration has been accentuated by the failure of France to stop the threat of violent extremists in the affected countries, despite its military presence there. Indeed, some citizens in the francophone world believe the military presence of France on their soil is a contributory factor, not the solution to the persistence of violence or war in their country.

Kwakye (see: https://tinyurl.com/2yj5up9k) has succinctly articulated the structural and systemic neocolonialist context in Francophone countries in West and Central Africa have generated and sustained the high sense of deprivation and associated grievances against France. He sums up how citizens in these countries have been living with legacy political nooses and economic shackles around their necks and ankles since their independence. It is common knowledge that politically, France has a huge influence on who gets to rule or stay in power in most Francophone countries in Africa, be it through elections or coup d’états. The political noose is adjusted around every electoral cycle or regime change process to ensure only persons who can dance to the puppet music of France get to rule. The noose is quickly tightened to eliminate, either physically or through the fall from power and favor, any aberrant leader who refuses to dance the puppet dance. The economic shackles, on the other hand, have ensured that France controls the economies of Francophone countries, including their ownership of and control over natural resources found on and under their soils. As a result, Francophone countries have not only been unable to chart their own paths of development; their manipulation by France has been used to thwart their integration into any bilateral or regional economic engagements that would cut them from the apron strings of France.

ECOWAS is certainly not unaware of this; it knows full well its multiple challenges of economic integration fueled by the resistance and sometimes outright distortions, usurpation, or disruptions of its policies and programs from its francophone member states. The surprise attempts of French President Macron and Cote d’Ivoire’s Ouattara in December 2019 to launch the West African Common currency, the Eco in January 2020 without the knowledge and concurrence of ECOWAS leaders is but one example. The foregoing provides the context in which ECOWAS leaders must understand the apparent massive and popular support that citizens of Niger give to the coup makers; it is the context that explains why Burkina Faso, Guinea, and Mali have ganged up, unprompted, to support the coup makers in Niger, if ECOWAS attempts to restore the deposed government through use of force; it is the context that must define what and how ECOWAS chooses to deal with the Niger problem; and it is the context that must inform with whom ECOWAS chooses to partner in its desire to return Niger to democratic rule.

Democracy, it is said, is the rule by the people. What the statement does not say is that the original conception of the word did not conceive of people (demo) as any people, its focus and intent was on the common people, ordinary people, which is the original meaning of the word demo from its Greek root in which demos meant the "common people” – see https://tinyurl.com/ft724v26. Protecting democracy is vital and the arbitrary overthrow of elected governments by the unelected cannot be justified under any circumstances. It is therefore understandable that pursuant to its avowed aim to restore democracy to Niger, ECOWAS was quick to invoke Article 1 (c) of Protocol A/SP1/12/01 to issue the ultimatum and declare its readiness to take military action to reinstate the deposed leader. However, given the contextual realities outlined above, it now has to ask itself a number of critical questions.

First, given the apparent support that the coup makers have garnered from successfully grafting their power motives on pent up anti-neocolonial grievances of the common people, ECOWAS must ask whose interests it seeks to protect – that of the rulers or the ruled? Second, do elections always represent the will of the people, especially when the choices the electorate face is between a rock and a hard place, especially since the citizens hardly see any changes in their circumstances irrespective of which political party gets to rule them? Third, President Mohamed Bazoum won the February 2021 presidential election run-off with 56% of valid votes. While no statistics exist to tell who is in the streets now standing with the coup makers, is it really the case that those in streets and stadia supporting the coup makers come from only the 44% of Nigeriens who did not vote for him in the elections? Fourth, if the crowds that show up in Niger to support the coup makers; the open denunciations of France by ordinary people in front of the cameras of international media; and the defiance voiced by people in the street against ECOWAS’ planned interventions are anything to go by, ECOWAS needs to ask whose interests is it going to war to protect? Finally, if ECOWAS’ principle of “Zero tolerance for power obtained or maintained by unconstitutional means” as enunciated in its Protocol on Democracy and Good Governance was intended to protect the will, what is really the will of the people when they believe those elected do not serve their interests but those who continue to tighten the colonial noose and shackles on them? On whose side is ECOWAS intervening - on the side of the people or is it planning a war against the will of the people?

Various security analysts have predicted a deterioration of the security situation in the Sahel as Wagner and other extremist groups take advantage of the uncertainties in the region to spread their spheres of operations into Niger. Hence, ECOWAS’ interventions may also be framed as protecting Niger from falling into the hands of violent extremists. There is also the geopolitical fear that Russia and China may seize the opportunity to consolidate their brand of economic imperialism in the region. For certain, Wagner is not a benevolent force that would go into Niger for altruistic reasons, and Russia and China have economic interests in the region that they seek to protect or expand. If these state and nonstate actors succeed, they would simply replace France in exclusively appropriately Niger’s natural resources for themselves to the same levels of exclusion and disadvantage for which the ordinary people of Niger are supporting the coup makers. Hence, a counterintuitive argument would be: shouldn’t the prospects of Wagner's takeover of the Sahel in itself impel ECOWAS to seek more accommodative ways of engaging the coup makers and the citizens to free Niger, and for that matter the region from any form of neocolonialist (re)insertions irrespective of the who are the hegemons? If ECOWAS’ interventions push Niger to embrace Wagner as a protection force against the violent extremists, as Burkina Faso and Mali have done, would the presence of a foreign occupation force in the region that has the support of member states not worsen the security dynamics in the region for ECOWAS?
Another issue that must be raised is that the concept of security that ECOWAS seeks to project is state-focused, not people-centered; it is about the protection of rulers, not the ruled; the people in power, not those in the streets. While human security will always be a concern for ordinary people, the daily worries of most people are more about how to feed, have decent shelter, afford healthcare, and secure other critical social services for their families. This is why they would risk their personal security in undertaking all forms of dangerous enterprises to secure these other forms of security – food, income, and health securities. For such people, given the popular perception that France’s political and economic interests in its former African colonies have been impediments to the development securing their human security needs, what response does ECOWAS have for the ordinary people whose anti-France reasons for supporting the coup makers is the hope for a more equitable, just, and enabling political and economic spaces and systems that enable them to earn a dignified living? To what extent have ECOWAS’ state security preoccupations for its plans to intervene in Niger addressed the people-level security issues of those supporting the coup?
In the event that ECOWAS carries through its threat to intervene kinetically in Niger, it would be invoking operational structures of ECOMOG, the de facto military arm of ECOWAS. In ECOWAS’ own words, ECOMOG “means the ECOWAS Cease-fire Monitoring Group” (Protocol A/SP1/12/01, p. 6). But, unlike in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and The Gambia, there is no active or threat of fighting between different factions in Niger as a result of the coup to warrant the intervention. Therefore, the rationale for intervention is difficult to assert beyond the spectacle of proving that ECOWAS lives by its principles. This makes the intervention appear not only as unwarranted, but as illegitimate as well. This is because in the eyes of the people, ECOWAS’ fight is not about securing their peace and security, it is about reinstating a leader who condones an international political system that suffocates them, politically and economically. It risks portraying ECOWAS as a manipulated force or a stooge that is obstructing the people’s fight for their second independence - liberation from the political and economic stranglehold of their colonial hegemon – France.
The spontaneous and unsolicited commitment of Guinea, Burkina Faso, and Mali to fight on the side of Niger signals that the issues and interests at stake in the Niger coup transcend the borders of Niger. It is easy to label it as a self-preservation mechanism of junta-cronies of the aligning countries seeking a common shield to ward off ECOWAS’ attacks on their stay in power. However, the success of the military leaders to weave an anti-France narrative around their interventions has successfully rallied citizens to their support, creating a situation where this fight is not about democracy, it is about a new independence for the francophone citizens in those countries.
ECOWAS leaders also need to be mindful that it is largely young people who are mobilizing to support the juntas in Burkina Faso, Guinea, Mali, and now Niger. The level of discontent among the youth with the current system of political economy in these countries should suggest that the narratives the military leaders have successfully spun resonate strongly with the youth. This could trigger a new era of liberation struggle in which the ordinary people see an opportunity in the military juntas to break the chains of neocolonialism that have been suffocating their development efforts. If the experiences of the Arab Springs provide a guide, it should caution that any attempt to suppress rather than find ways to constructively engage the youth groups supporting the coup makers will not only embolden the coup makers and their supporters, it will close all avenues for peaceful and constructive engagements that enable the restoration of peace and democracy in ways that also address the longstanding concerns of lack of development dividends from the same governance and democratic systems that ECOWAS is eager to protect.
In sum, ECOWAS must not act in haste just to satisfy its protocols. It must act with caution to address the needs of the citizens of Niger and for that matter Burkina Faso, Guinea, and Mali. It must make haste slowly to bring the people in these countries along with its agenda for peace and good governance if it aims to secure lasting peace and sustainable development for its citizens in those member countries. ECOWAS must choose whether it wants to serve people or principles that hurt the people.