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| ECOWAS Comission, Abuja, Nigeria (Pix: EC) |
The
protocol is meant to promote unfettered movement of Community citizens within
the region as part of the process of creating a single regional economic space
where citizens can avail themselves of the opportunities that abound in Member
States and contribute to the region’s development.
It
also seeks to enhance intra-Community trade, which presently hovers between 11
and 13 percent, and contribute to the stimulation of the regional economy.
However,
since the signing of the document on May 29, 1979, little
progress has been made in realising one of ECOWAS’s most important initiatives.
As present leaders hide under the cloak of “maintaining peace and security” in
their respective countries, it has become apparent that it has been ever
difficult for ECOWAS citizens to enjoy their rights of “free movement of
persons, goods and services”.
This is characterized by the
numerous but unnecessary security checks established within countries and at
the boarders of the various ECOWAS States.
During the opening of an August
22 train-the-trainers workshop
in Koroduma, Nasarawa State for Nigerian immigration officials on the “ECOWAS
Protocol on the Free Movement of Persons, Goods and Right of Residence and
Establishment” the President of the ECOWAS Commission exhorts for a borderless
ECOWAS region.
President
James Victor Gbeho called on immigration operatives in Member States to work
towards the achievement of a borderless Community through effective
implementation of the regional protocol on free movement.
Gbeho, who was represented by Mr. Tony Elumelu, Principal
Programme Officer at the Commission’s Directorate of Free Movement and Tourism,
was quoted to have said: “In seeking to accelerate the attainment of a
borderless Community, the ECOWAS Commission is disposed to activate public
participation in the protocol implementation with the use of enormous human
resources”.
According
to ECOWAS, the sustenance of the regional integration drive was contingent on
free movement of Community citizen. This, it said, would complement the
Commission’s on-going initiative to introduce in West Africa, a Shengen-type
visa regime operational in some European Union Member States.
And
President Gbeho added that on-going sensitization of the operatives and
citizens was part of sustained efforts to reduce, if not eliminate, the
hardship and cases of harassment and intimidation of Community citizens in the
hands of security operatives in the common borders.
In
April 2011,
the ECOWAS Commissioner for Trade Alhagie Mohammed B. Daramy blamed “security” for slow progress in Trade and
Regional Integration, saying security reasons remain the main factor
impeding the ECOWAS Protocol on Free Movement of Goods and Services and
regional integration through trade in the sub-region.
“The
instability we have in the sub-region have also make countries not willing to
open their borders for people to move freely,” he told The Voice at the
end of a five-day sub-regional workshop on the ECOWAS Common External Tariff
(CET) held in Banjul. “Members of ECOWAS lack commitment to the Protocol they
have signed, thereby holding back the trade regional integration process within
the sub-region.”
During
a March 23, 2011
workshop on “Human Rights Approach in the Process of Regional Integration in
West Africa” in Banjul, The Gambia, organised by the Senegal-based National
Organisation for Human Rights (ONDH), its President Djibril Aziz BADIANE
stressed that human rights cannot be detached from Governments, democracy, good
governance, and solidarity.
“Presented
as one of the safest levers of socio-economic development of Africa, the
regional integration process, in fact, raises a series of problems relatively
distant from populations concerned,” said BADIANE, whose organisation (ONDH) is
currently steering a six-month project to promote the participation of the
Non-State Actors (civil society) in the process of regional integration within
ECOWAS.
This,
he said is in respond the concerns of economic operators and civil society
representatives, who, since the 1980s organised themselves to express their
positions in participating in everything that committed and defend their
interests as actors and citizens.
For
him, the realisation of free movement of persons, good and services rest
largely on respect for human rights. “When a government obliged itself to
uphold certain duties, but refuse to do so, then that tantamount to bad
governance. When we talk about human rights, we do not mean to attack or
criticize Governments, but to bring to the fore the fundamental rights of the
people,” he said.
However,
ECOWAS said the August 22-26, 2011 training for
the immigration operatives which was held at Koroduma, Nasarawa State of
Nigeria is one of the activities being pursued by the ECOWAS Commission to
address the challenges identified with the implementation of the Free Movement
Protocol, including harassment, corruption, indiscriminate road blocks and erection
of non tariff barriers.
Immigration
officials within the sub-region are being challenged to assume the
responsibility as the new drivers of emerging migration trends in the ECOWAS
region. They should give meaning to the concept of Borderless Border by opening
up their operations in line with international best practices, according to the
Comptroller
General, Nigeria Immigration Service, Mrs. Rose Uzoma.
She called
on the Commission to address the challenge of dearth of information by
sponsoring joint sensitization seminars with emphasis on the new approach to
passenger clearance.
Air-Vice
Marshal Terry Okorodudu (retied),
Chair of the ECOWAS Free Movement Monitoring Team, said the essence of the
Community protocol on free movement “rests squarely on immigration, (and)
without immigration there will be no ECOWAS”.
He
stressed the need for the creation of a reliable database that will be
accessible to all stakeholders on immigration issues.
Author: Modou S.
Joof for The Voice Newspaper
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