The Economic Community of West African States says the sub-region is the most stable among Africa’s regional economic communities, despite the existential threat confronting it.

ECOWAS commissioner for political affairs, peace and security, Abdel-Fatau Musah, disclosed this on Monday in Abuja. He said West Africa had been hard hit by violent extremism and terrorism, and its resultant existential threat, but did not disintegrate because of the various preventive mechanisms its leaders put in place.

Mr Musah explained that ECOWAS collaboration with the African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA IV), a European Union-funded security framework through the African Union, provided the roadmap for stabilising West Africa.

The APSA IV Programme (Fourth Action Plan for Stability and Peace in Africa) is a major strategic and financial framework established to enhance peace, security, and stability in Africa. 

It was unveiled in February 2020,  and backed by a substantial financial commitment of 40.5 million euros from the EU via the African Peace Facility, until December 31, 2025. 

He said ECOWAS leveraged APSA IV and its corollary, the Africa Governance Architecture, which together constituted the basic continental framework documents governing peace and security governance for the sub-region’s stability.

“In our collaboration with the African Union, these two fundamental documents are the base documents through which we implemented our sub-regional mechanisms, particularly the ECOWAS Protocol on the Mechanism for Conflict Prevention, Management, Resolution, Peacekeeping and Security, which was adopted in 1999,” he said.

According to him, the EU support initiative through the African Union also proved instrumental in strengthening institutional stability and human capacity-building for ECOWAS and its institutions across the sub-region.

He noted that the most profound successes of the APSA IV framework were in its support to the ECOWAS Early Warning mechanisms spread across West Africa, peace-building, conflict management, and resolution.

“This resource has helped in conflict prevention, seriously, because most of the time we confront unforeseen events,” he added. “This resource has been very important in trying to make sure that we sort of defuse tensions before they blow up into crisis in the region.”

He further said APSA IV funding also helped the centres of excellence to do proper research on issues affecting peace and security, capacity-building by way of a catalytic training for trainers, and election support.

“For example, at the moment, we are supporting our centres of excellence to do something like evidence-based study on the impact of misinformation and disinformation, which have become one of the main consequences of the global world today,” he said.

The commissioner attributed violent extremism and terrorism to “current global fragmentations”, stressing that they are not unique to West Africa.

He said ECOWAS identified early that violent extremism and terrorism were the number one threat facing the sub-region and realised that, “if terrorism was allowed to fester, then we should forget about regional integration”.

This led ECOWAS to constitute a counterterrorism brigade, comprising about 1,500 forces, in line with the APSA IV framework and the ECOWAS Standby Force mechanism.

“There were many predictions that ECOWAS was going to implode, while more and more countries were going to withdraw, but we stuck to our principles.

“So, if I have to talk about one thing, it is about how we’ve been able to keep the region relatively stable over this period, because in spite of what happened, the region has been quite stable up to today,” he said.

The commissioner said that ECOWAS has become a model for other regional economic communities, especially with its successful past pacesetting initiatives.

He said that recently ECOWAS Heads of State and Government adopted one of such frameworks called the Compact of the Future of ECOWAS, which will redefine the future West African integration.

(NAN)