ECOWAS SEEKS EU’S SUPPORT IN RESOLVING CRISIS IN NIGER.

By Ferdinard Olise

A delegation from the Economic Community of West African States, ECOWAS, has visited Toledo Spain on Thursday August 31, 2023, to solicit for the support of the European Union, EU, concerning the political situation in the Republic of Niger.

The delegation includes the President of the ECOWAS Commission, Dr Omar Alieu Touray, other officials, and accompanied by the Niger’s Minister of Foreign Affairs appointed under President Mohamed Bazoum.

During the visit, Dr Touray presented the ECOWAS Commission’s Niger policy to the 27-nation bloc.

“My visit this afternoon is to explain our position to the European Union, what has informed the various measures that ECOWAS has taken and the collaboration we seek from all our partners.

“As you know, the world is a global village. One event in a particular place affects the whole world. So that is why we feel it, we find it important to come to Spain to talk to our partners from the European Union so that they understand what we are doing and give us the support that they are able to give us.

“African solutions to African problems. We are on listening mode, as I said yesterday we are ready to consider to study any proposal coming from the ECOWAS. I want to repeat the idea that President Bazoum was the only authority democratically elected in the whole Sahel.” Dr Touray said.

Meanwhile, EU Foreign Ministers converged for a one-day informal meeting in Toledo, central Spain.

Meanwhile, EU countries have expressed worry that instability in Sahel will put more people on the route of irregular migration, as the threat of a military intervention by the west African block still looms.

On resolving the Niger crisis, the ECOWAS demands the unconditional release of President Bazoum from detention, and his reinstatement, as the democratically elected President of Niger Republic.

Dr Touray had said that, coup d’tat is a tragedy for the ECOWAS regional efforts at consolidating its democracy after the political crisis of the 1990s exemplified by the civil wars in Liberia, and Sierra Leone.

The bloc is therefore, making frantic efforts to ensure that constitutional order is restored in the Republic of Niger, by meeting the Military junta there, and other relevant stakeholders, and countries.