The West African regional bloc ECOWAS said this past weekend it was lifting sanctions it had imposed on Niger, Mali and Guinea following military takeovers in those countries, but which failed to have their desired impact, another sign of the bloc’s waning influence.
Senegalese President Macky Sall announced Friday that he would comply with a court order to conduct the country’s presidential election as soon as possible, after he attempted to delay the polls until December. The controversy is just the latest close call for Senegal’s democracy, which has significantly eroded under Sall.
Senegalese President Macky Sall announced on Saturday that he had indefinitely postponed the country’s presidential election, a move the opposition has denounced as an attack on West Africa’s most stable democracy.
When Nigerian President Bola Tinubu was elected chairperson of the ECOWAS last July, he underscored his commitment to defending democracy across the region, which had already seen a string of military coups. That could come back to haunt him, given recent developments in the region and ECOWAS’ performance under Tinubu’s leadership.