President Muhammadu Buhari:
ECOWAS Champion for COVID-19 Response or a Tale of Shock and Disappointment?
Nathaniel Msen Awuapila, fspsp, fimc
Executive Director,
CORAFID Centre for Innovation
and Research (CORAFID)
Makurdi, Benue State, Nigeria
Ngo.corafid@yahoo.com
08066559669 (SMS ONLY)
On Thursday, 23 March, 2020, ECOWAS leaders during a teleconference chaired by the President of the Republic of Niger, Mahammadou Issoudou, named Nigeria’s President Muhmmadu Buhari as the sub-region’s champion for coronavirus (COVID-19) response. President Buhari who is reported to have called upon his fellow ECOWAS leaders to look beyond the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic by identifying opportunities for succeeding beyond it has, by virtue of this appointment, been called upon to provide leadership for ECOWAS to do exactly what he proposed. According to africafeeds.com, President Buhari had, inter alia, challenged his fellow leaders thus: “Our region must, therefore, seek to find those opportunities provided by this gloomy global outlook for its benefit by embarking on the implementation of such critical policies, which, before now, will be difficult to accept.” Going forward, it would seem, PMB, as he is fondly called by his admirers, must take responsibility for guiding ECOWAS in the direction he indicated.
So far, a review of reactions to this latest development by citizens some of who are popular names in Nigeria, presents an overwhelmingly negative response among Nigerians. Some persons have reacted by calling upon President Buhari to reject the appointment because they believe that he is incompetent to do what he has been called upon to do. Others seem to think that ECOWAS leaders should be ashamed for appointing Nigeria’s President rather than the Ghanaian President. Those who suggest that the President of Ghana would have been a better choice presented him as one with a better strategy for countering COVID-19. People have expressed their various views, but none that I know of has suggested that the choice of President Buhari was a wise one.
What are my personal thoughts about this development? In my opinion, many people who have reacted negatively to this news may be missing an important point about the possible overall scenario that ECOWAS leaders may have worked with. In the first place, did it occur to the critics that it was President Buhari, not the Ghanaian President and not any other person, that came up, as reported, with the bold vision to develop a sub-regional plan to tackle and defeat COVID-19? By the way, if not for the benefit of some hindsight about how international politics and diplomatic alliances inform national and international policies, then the decision taken by the ECOWAS leaders would have left me in a condition of mental and emotional stupor, like the popular critics. However, based on the advantage of some understanding of how politics works, I would say that the ECOWAS leaders were far more calculative and far-sighted than many people may think.
It is important to note that the factors that world leaders consider when taking key decisions – chairmanship of ECOWAS response to COVID-19 being only one of such decisions – is not always about the personal qualities of a leader/ruler. More often than not, the primary considerations tend to centre around the concentration of power and authority in a country or a region, or the collectivity of resources that a country represents and can deploy or make available for the use of the affected countries or group of countries, etc. For example, while Nigeria was still crumbling under the twin weight of Boko Haram and entrenched corruption, Africa’s leaders in 2018 sat and agreed to declare Nigeria’s President Buhari as the continent’s anti-corruption champion! Who heard the news and was not shocked? But that is how international politics is played globally. Again in 2018, at a time when it seemed like President Buhari had no clue about how to address the farmers and herders imbroglio in Nigeria, he it was that suggested the need for ECOWAS to meet and decide on a common approach to the protracted farmer-herder conflict. In addition, President Buhari went ahead to host the “ECOWAS Regional Meeting Of The Ministers In Charge Of Security And Agriculture/Livestock On Transhumance”, on April 26 of that year (ECW/CM/LXXIV/….) and he was represented at that meeting by former Minister of Interior, Gen. (Rtd) Abdulrahman Bello Dambazau. The approach suggested by the Government of Nigeria, which was also consistent with that expressed by the United Nations earlier, remains the general approach being championed in the sub-region by ECOWAS leaders and some major donors.
Well, those who are ashamed or alarmed by the latest news of President Muhammadu Buhari’s appointment as ECOWAS leaders’ champion for COVID-19 response should see it through the lens of international politics and diplomacy. Look at President Buhari in terms of the power that Nigeria controls on the global scene. The same country (Nigeria) has its citizens occupying positions such as: President of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations (UN), and the executive leadership of the African Development Bank (AfDB), and several other strategic positions at the Africa Union (AU) and other significant leadership positions across the continent, not forgetting the country’s financial power in Africa and the sub-region. Are you now seeing what I saw already? The examples available for public analysis suggest that the nomination of a country’s President, in this case Nigeria’s President, does not have to be only about the personal qualities of the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
Finally, the principle of good citizenship does suggest that the appointment of a country’s national leader such as the examples we considered above, should be approached with a certain degree of faith and patriotism. Research institutes, universities, the private sector and civil society stakeholders should have risen to the occasion to congratulate their President and then should have proceeded to generate lots of actionable ideas, which they should have shared with the President’s team and demanded for their appropriate implementation, while assuring their Government that they would be available for further consultation and technical and or material support in executing the plans.
