Ecowas Parliament, Regional Integration and Democratic Consolidation in West Africa:

The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) was established in 1975 to promote integration and cooperation amongst the States of the West African sub-region. The then Nigerian Head of State, General Yakubu Gowon and his counterpart in Togo, General Gnassingbe Eyadema, were credited with the pioneering efforts. The experiment was inspired by the example of the European Union (EU) which was set up in 1951 by the countries in Western Europe following the devastations occasioned by the Second World War (1939-1945). The whole idea was for the participating member states in West Africa to pool their resources together and leverage on their collective strengths and advantages to promote integration, development and cooperation with a view to improving the living standards of the citizens. The ultimate objective as captured in the ECOWAS Vision 2020 was to transform ECOWAS from ECOWAS of States to ECOWAS of the peoples and turning the sub-region into a borderless community with shared prosperity. But at the inception of ECOWAS, the ECOWAS Parliament was not part of the organs and institutions that were put in place to drive the integration process. It became obvious that in the absence of the parliament, the laudable vision of transforming the ECOWAS from the ECOWAS of States to ECOWAS of the peoples was an unattainable mission. The leaders of the ECOWAS in their wisdom established the ECOWAS Parliament to fill the missing gap and help give fillip to the regional economic integration process. In this paper, we try to evaluate the contributions of the Parliament to the integration process and the deepening of democratic values and ethos within the sub-region. We employed the elite theory as our framework of analysis. The theory rests on the assumptions that public policies reflect the values, preferences and interests of the elite as the dominant class in the society. The central argument of this paper is that the introduction of the ECOWAS Parliament has helped significantly in refocusing the agenda of the Community and moving it away from the ECOWAS of States to ECOWAS of the people in line with the ECOWAS Vision 2020. The paper concludes that the ECOWAS Parliament has, within its 21 years of functional existence, made tangible progress in advancing the integration process in West Africa. The study recommends the strengthening of the Parliament with the requisite powers to hold ECOWAS leaders accountable to the community citizens.