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The President of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), Dr Omar Alieu Touray, said the region risks a great deal of disintegration.
He stated this during his address at the inauguration of the legislature of the 6th ECOWAS parliament attended by Pulse at the International Conference Centre (ICC) in Abuja on Thursday, April 4, 2023.
Tourey also spoke on the essence of a unified community in the ECOWAS region while referring to threats made by Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger to withdraw their membership from the regional body.
He stated that the regional body might be forced to withdraw its $500 million developmental projects from the three aforementioned countries.
The Commission's President said workers of ECOWAS in these countries are also at risk of losing their jobs.
ECOWAS MP faults parliament's hastiness
Speaking exclusively to Pulse at the event, Hon. Awaji-Inombek Dagomie Abiante, a Rivers State federal lawmaker and member of the ECOWAS Parliament, said the ECOWAS parliament made hasty decisions in sanctioning the three member states who threatened withdrawal from the regional body.
Abiante said, "We need to establish the fulcrum for the community's existence in the first place. The community is aimed at enhancing economic development. When there are variants of democracy, there has to be a common denominator. When issues affect communities and states, it should be based on the common denominator.
"Governance is about the welfare of the people. When issues arose, interventions were needed. We should sit down with the various states and understand their particularities.
"I think ECOWAS also has a blame. Some of the decisions that were taken were hasty. As parliaments, we had several meetings, and we appealed that we understood the challenges before we began to rain out sanctions. The threats as of today could have been as a result of the sanctions."