10th October 2025
Leaders of the Economic Community of West African States met in Abuja on Thursday to address growing administrative and political complications within the regional bloc, including stalled recruitment, loss of staff from member withdrawals, and institutional challenges.
Speaking at the opening of the Extraordinary Meeting of the Council of Ministers, ECOWAS Commission President, Ambassador Omar Touray, said the session was “borne out of necessity,” pointing to long-standing procedural delays in recruitment and the strain caused by member states exiting the organisation.
“In the last three years, we have managed to fill vacancies in our institutions using a staff regulation that, for a large part, constrains management’s ability to administratively expedite this process,” Touray said.
He cited the aging workforce and the manual processing of applications as major challenges.
“The volume of applicants is beyond the capacity of the recruitment firms in place. We have had to recruit additional firms and sought your approval for these international independent firms.”
Touray also raised concerns about the exit of staff from countries that have left ECOWAS—Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger—and asked ministers to decide how to redistribute those positions.
“We need council to guide us in the equitable distribution of the vacant positions among all the member states without sacrificing competence,” he said.
The Chair of the Council of Ministers and Sierra Leone’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Timothy Kabba, emphasised the political dimension of the staffing issue.
“Our focus should not only be on the parameters of equitable distribution but also we should be particularly concerned about fairness and inclusivity,” he said.
Kabba warned that recruitment delays and representation gaps touch directly on ECOWAS’s credibility.
The recruitment issue is not merely administrative, but it touches on institutional credibility, regional integration, and political legitimacy,” he said.
He also used his speech to highlight broader instability in the region, pointing to the rise of extremist violence, food insecurity, and the displacement of civilians.
“We are witnessing a surge in terrorist and extremist violence, unprecedented in scale, intensity and sophistication,” he said, citing groups such as the Islamic State West African Province. “These trends demand urgent and coordinated actions.”
The Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Ambassador Bianca Odumegwu-Ojukwu, welcomed delegates and reinforced Nigeria’s support for ECOWAS, while also addressing the staffing crisis directly.
This extraordinary session of the ECOWAS Council of Ministers (is) convened to deliberate on a matter of institutional importance—recruitment to fill the vacancies within the ECOWAS system, and the status of staff who are citizens of Burkina Faso, Niger and Mali, following the decision of these countries to withdraw from our communities,” she said.
She added that Nigeria would continue to support the organisation’s efforts to function effectively.
“We fully recognise the importance of this exercise as an essential undertaking aimed at ensuring that all existing vacancies are duly filled.”
Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso announced their withdrawal from ECOWAS earlier in 2024, accusing the bloc of abandoning its foundational values.
In a joint statement, the military governments—led by Ibrahim Traoré (Burkina Faso), Assimi Goita (Mali), and Abdourahamane Tiani (Niger)—said ECOWAS had failed to support their efforts to combat terrorism, which they claimed justified their coups and the removal of elected leaders.
The three countries formally exited ECOWAS on 29 January 2025.
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