ABUJA: A West African leaders’ summit opened amid political turmoil on Sunday after the army rulers of Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso cemented a breakaway union at a rival assembly.
The three nations introduced they have been forming a brand new confederation, and their defiant first gathering on the eve of the Financial Group of West African States (ECOWAS) summit marked one other check for the regional bloc they break up from earlier this yr.
ECOWAS is already wrestling with sweeping jihadist violence, monetary bother and the challenges of mustering a regional power.
It was not clear how the fractured bloc would reply after Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso adopted a treaty establishing a “Confederation of Sahel States” in Niamey on Saturday.
However ECOWAS Fee chief Omar Alieu Touray mentioned the three nations risked “political isolation” and shedding thousands and thousands of {dollars} in investments.
The break would additionally worsen insecurity and hamper the work of the long-proposed regional power, he mentioned earlier than the bloc started a closed-door session in Nigeria’s capital Abuja.
“Our area is going through the danger of disintegration,” he warned.
The juntas in Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso got here to energy in a sequence of coups over latest years and introduced their joint departure from ECOWAS in January. They’ve shifted away from former colonial ruler France and expelled French troops, with Niger’s Basic Abdourahamane Tiani calling for the institution of a “group far faraway from the stranglehold of overseas powers”.
“Our individuals have irrevocably turned their backs on ECOWAS,” Tiani mentioned on Saturday, rebuffing the bloc’s pleas to come back again into the fold.
The Sahel nations’ ECOWAS exit was fuelled partly by their accusation that Paris was manipulating the bloc and never offering sufficient assist for anti-jihadist efforts.
A number of West African leaders have referred to as for the resumption of dialogue and Sunday’s summit was the primary for Senegal’s new President Bassirou Diomaye Faye, who mentioned in Might that reconciliation was doable.
Niger’s ties with ECOWAS deteriorated following the July 2023 coup that introduced Tiani to energy, when the bloc imposed sanctions and threatened to intervene militarily to revive ousted president Mohamed Bazoum.
The sanctions have been lifted in February however relations stay bitter. Forward of the ECOWAS summit, defence and finance ministers have been wanting into funding a “regional power to fight terrorism and restore constitutional order,” based on the ECOWAS Fee.
It has referred to as for the institution of an preliminary 1,500-strong unit, and one proposal was to then muster a brigade of 5,000 troopers at a price of round $2.6 billion a yr.
ECOWAS has launched army interventions previously, however its risk of doing so after the coup in Niger fizzled out.
Because the bloc grapples with regional challenges, Touray warned it was going through a “dire monetary state of affairs.”
There have been additionally studies of a rift over the doable reappointment of Nigerian President Bola Ahmed Tinubu as ECOWAS chair.
Media adviser to the Nigerian president Bayo Onanuga instructed AFP that “whereas some nations need him to stay as a result of the area has confronted some disaster, the Francophone nations need the seat.”
A number of French-speaking nations despatched their overseas ministers to Sunday’s summit as a substitute of their leaders.
