Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) is holding an Extraordinary Summit in Abuja today, Thursday, August 10, to review the situation in Niger Republic resulting from the July 26 military coup which ousted President Mohamed Bazoum and the refusal of the coup leaders to reinstate the President or come to the negotiation table. The West African bloc under the chairmanship of the Nigerian President, Bola Tinubu had directed the coup leaders to reinstate the democratically-elected President of the country, Mohamed Bazoum within 7 days or face sanctions, including possible military intervention by troops from its Member States. The ultimatum elapsed on Sunday, August 6 and ECOWAS has reacted by imposing additional financial sanctions on Niger Republic. However, the Nigerian Senate refused to approve President Tinubu\u2019s request to deploy Nigerian troops to Niger Republic. The lawmakers sued for further dialogue and negotiation to address the situation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The coup leaders\non their part, rejected the proposed visit of a joint delegation from the\nAfrican Union, ECOWAS and United Nations slated for August 8, citing security\nrisks to the delegation. The military leaders also announced an indefinite\nclosure of Niger\u2019s airspace \u2013 a measure that has resulted in delays and\ndisruptions, particularly for commercial flight operations. Meanwhile, Mali,\nGuinea (Conakry) and Burkina Faso, which have experienced coups in 2020, 2021\nand 2022, respectively have expressed solidarity for Niger Republic. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In response to the\ncoup, ECOWAS announced immediate sanctions including border closure between\nECOWAS Member States and Niger, ban on commercial flights to and from Niger to\nthese countries and financial transactions between Niger and its ECOWAS\ncounterparts. Nigeria also cut off electricity supply to Niger as part of these\nsanctions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The rise in the\nincidence of military coups and attempted coups in African countries in recent\ntime has raised concern and drawn criticism within the region and globally.\nHowever, ECOWAS\u2019 threat of possible use of force to reinstate a democratic\ngovernment in Niger raised even more concern due to the huge risk and\nunpredictable outcome associated with such an operation. Several countries\nwithin the West African sub-region are presently grappling with serious\neconomic challenges, terrorism and other issues of internal insecurity. This\nbegs the question of the propriety of military intervention in a country within\nthe bloc and its attendant impact. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Chairman of ECOWAS\nAuthority of Heads of State and Government, President Tinubu, through his spokesperson,\nAjuri Ngelale has stated that diplomacy is the best way forward and a\npreference for West African leaders, which will be maintained pending further\nresolutions by ECOWAS. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) is holding an Extraordinary Summit in Abuja today, Thursday, August 10, to review the situation in Niger Republic resulting from the July 26 military coup which ousted President Mohamed Bazoum and the refusal of the coup leaders to reinstate the President or come to the negotiation table. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3346,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3338","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3338","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3338"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3338\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3344,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3338\/revisions\/3344"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3346"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}