By Richard Ihediwa
On Thursday, August 11,
2011, top
parliamentarians from West African countries converged on Abuja, Nigeria’s capital, for the inauguration of the third session of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), Parliament. The ceremony was performed by President Goodluck Jonathan in his capacity as the Chairman of ECOWAS.
The event became significant to the country, following the unanimous election of Nigeria’s Deputy Senate President Ike Ekweremadu as Speaker of the ECOWAS Parliament, which is also referred to as the Community Parliament.
Ekweremadu took over from Hon. Mohamaned Ousmane of Niger Republic. However, in keeping with the tradition of the parliament, the gavel was handed over to him by the oldest member of the parliament, Hon. Daudu Wade of Senegal.
As Ekweremadu wields the gavel of the regional body, analysts see before him series of challenges which he is expected to tackle and overcome in the next four years.
The new Speaker is expected to work out and implement strategies that will help reposition the regional body to enable it champion and achieve its mandates in a way that the sub-region will effectively benefit from it in the short and long run.
Founders of the regional parliament had envisaged a body that will foster the generating of solid legal frame work for the entrenchment of democracy and good governance in the sub-region, so as to enable member countries to effectively synergise and mutually cooperate in the areas of citizenship and social integration trade, commerce and industry, health, education, energy, security, telecommunication, information, youth and sports; scientific and technological research, environment, among others.
Most of the leaders envisaged a regional lawmaking body with members elected by direct universal adult suffrage and with powers drawn from willing surrender of certain legislative sovereignties of member states.
However, over the years, this vision has not been fully realised. Analysts attribute this to the inability of the Parliament to get member states to fully recognise and willingly subject to the legislations that may be passed at the parliament.
This has to a great extent frustrated quests to transform the body to a full-fledged lawmaking body which legislations that will have full force in member countries.
It is against this backdrop that critics insists that the new Speaker has an onerous job ahead, and it appears that Ekweremadu is fully aware of the weight of the iron cap he wears.
Ekweremadu is faced with the task of winning the support and having full participation of governments and parliaments of member countries in such a way that the dreams of the founding fathers of the regional body will be achieved and in the shortest possible time too.
He is expected to begin the repositioning of the parliament for cross border legislative activities as well as device the means of getting the member states surrender critical aspects of legislative sovereignty to the regional body.
The new Speaker is faced with the task of fashioning out ways to win the confidence of the member states, in order to ensure the domestication of rules and laws passed by the regional parliament without compromising the body of laws and supreme norms in these countries.
However, armed by his wealth of experience in national and international parliamentary practices, Ekweremadu has already marshaled out his plans to ensure that he makes the difference in the next four years.
Immediately, he was inaugurated, Ekweremadu vowed that his leadership will be anchored on mutual respect, consultation, transparency and accountability adding that his major agenda was to use the Parliament to push for positive changes to the region.
Currently, he is perfecting a template that will guarantee the involvement of heads of governments of member states in the transformation agenda especially in the effort to achieve zero tolerance for corruption and anti-democratic tendencies in the sub-region.
In this regard, Ekweremadu assured of his plans to evolve strategies that will transform the Parliament into a pacesetter on legislative best practices and high ethical standards for peace and development in the sub-region which he said will turn the body into the voice of the people of the sub-region through which they will be heard even from the grass root.
“It is my foremost task to take this parliament from the seemingly far-removed international institution to one that lives among the people and rooted in their consciousness”, he said.
To achieve this, Ekweremadu charged the parliamentarians to be ready for more collaborative endeavors for accelerated solutions to the problems facing the people.
The new Speaker said ECOWAS parliamentarians must collectively tackle “the issues of human right, justice, education, peace building, deepening the roots of democracy, and catalysing economic development through industrialisation and increased volume of intra-regional trade which still stands at very low percentage compared to trade between individual member states and Asia, Europe and American interests”.
To hit the ground running, Ekweremadu had charged all standing committees of the Parliament to be ready to work with all institutions and organs of the Community. This he said is to enable the Parliament achieve and consolidate on its quest for a sub-region that has zero tolerance for bad governance, injustice and impunity, corruption, coup d’etats and blemished electoral process. These he said are the true roots of conflicts and violence in the sub-region which must be collectively checked.
Critics see Ekweremadu achieving much in repositioning the Parliament, especially given his wealth of experience and demonstrated commitment towards change.
The ECOWAS Parliament, also known as the Community Parliament, was established under article 6 and 13 of the ECOWAS Revised Treaty of 1993. It has been functioning as a forum for dialogue, consultation and consensus for representatives of the peoples of West Africa, with the aim of promoting integration.
It is currently not a full-functioning legislative body but is playing consultative roles, especially in the area of advising governments of member states on wide range issues towards guaranteeing political stability and economic growth in the region.
Currently the Parliament has 115 seats distributed among 15 ECOWAS members states. Lawmakers are nominated by the countries to fill the seats and they also consists members of the Parliaments’ 13 standing committees.
It is expected that members countries will soon start seeing results as the envisaged boost in collaborative actions commences with the ECOWAS Parliament.
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