Former UN Special representative of the Secretary-General for West Africa, Dr Mohammed Ibn Chambas, has revealed that the West African sub region is doing poorly when it comes to its democratic values.

According to him, the recent surge of military takeover, if ignored, will have dire impact on the security and political stability in the sub-region.

Mr Chambas explained that he finds rather worrying a recent democracy index ranking which revealed that no West African country is truly democratic. With this, he blamed the downward trend of democratic governance in West Africa on the actions of its political leaders.

“The implication is that the sub region is doing poorly in respect of its democratic values as a trend of the indices looked downward. Even the countries that are seen to be doing well have scored lower marks than previous years. The Mo Ibrahim index and the freedom in the world report of 2020 corroborates the narrative sub-Saharan Africa as a whole and the democratic governance trajectory is sliding and West Africa is no exception. The situation in the sub region is surprisingly worse, as it deteriorated faster compared to the rest of the African country”.
Dr Mohammed Ibn Chambas

Speaking at the forum to review the state of democracy, Mr Chambas called for a review of the ECOWAS protocols in a bid to coerce leaders to comply with the beliefs of democracy. He revealed that the recent sanctions imposed on Mali and Guinea are examples of these “enhanced sanctioning regimes”.

“This notwithstanding, for any sanctioning regime to be effective, there must be an accompanying robust reassessment and monitoring system of the socio-political consequences and their potential effect on the economic, political, and social dynamics in the country”.
Dr Mohammed Ibn Chambas

Mr Chambas explained that West Africa has been marred recently by processes leading into “manipulation of constitutions” to extend time limits. He concerted to the fact that among such processes include the instrumentalization of justice, electoral systems that hamper participation of political or potential candidate and voters.

Democracy in the region

On her part, Mrs Levinia Addae-Mensah, Executive Director at West Africa Network for Peacebuilding (WANEP), disclosed that the dynamics that the region has witnessed started from last year with the “tampering” of constitutions which were legitimised or perceived to have been “legitimised” through referendum as it was in the case of Guinea.

Mrs Addae-Mensah explained that once that started, it was an indication “we were in real trouble” in terms of term elongations. She revealed that this is telling in countries such as Mali and Guinea with their “coup d’état”.

“I think these dynamics speak volumes with regards to concerns around democracy in the region. These concerns have existed for a number of years and I think some of us have been raising them. Not just about elections but beyond elections, the very quality of democracy in the region was going downwards and I think the three coup d’états we’ve had this year, I think are very clear indications that definitely these was a major issue that we need to address…”
Mrs Levinia Addae-Mensah