President Bola Tinubu, in his capacity as the Chairman of the Economic Community of West Africa, ECOWAS, has received briefing from President John Mahama of Ghana on his recent visits to the neighbouring Sahelian countries.
His visits to those countries, where he were accorded warm receptions, was aimed at bringing them back to ECOWAS, after they left the fold as a result of misunderstanding.
The countries in question are Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso, where unconstitutional change of government took place.
Shortly after that, ECOWAS met and demanded an unconditional return to civil rule, failure of which, sanctions were threatened.
This, primarily, instigated the Sahelian countries to leave ECOWAS.
Dialogue to bring them back was initiated, but stalled at some points, and using his relationship with them to get them back, President Mahama paid visits to them.
While explaining the purpose of his meeting with President Tinubu, who is the Chairman of ECOWAS, President Mahama said he came to brief him on the outcome of his interactions with the Heads of the Sahelian countries.
“I came to brief him on a visit I made to the Sahelian countries, Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, and to bring him up to date with some of the issues that I discussed with him, so that we continue to see how to dialogue with those other countries”, he said.
Asked whether his engagements with them were successful, President Mahama said they were knotty.
“It’s a complicated situation and it’s not as easy as we might think, but we just need to continue to dialogue and see how we can continue to cooperate together” President Mahama explained.
President Tinubu thereafter told newsmen that he was delighted with the Ghanaian President’s efforts.
“I feel good that he’s here in the first place, and I’m indeed very happy of the effort he’s made to have a bridge between the AES countries and the ECOWAS. It’s not a bad idea, for us, because of the security situation in the Sahel region and what economic opportunity that we must embark to ensure security of life and property of our citizens. The innocent people in this episode are the citizens of those countries. Not much about us, the leadership”, President Tinubu noted.
Bello Wakili
