In a statement read publicly by a representative today on the 28th of January 2024, the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) has stated its withdrawal from the neocolonial controlled organisation that is ECOWAS.
ECOWAS was formed in 1975 as part of a wave of RECs or regional economic blocks across the African Continent, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah had discouraged the formation of these groupings and instead pushed for a politically Unified Africa as the final solution to the problems affecting the continent.
As it is with the colonialists like the United States and Europe, they encouraged the RECs because they knew they would easily capture them, and indeed capturing they did. Ecowas as an organisation has become oblivious to the interests of the African people, it is an organisation governed by the corrupt middle class in West Africa many of whom have destroyed their own economies and don’t like accounting to anyone, whenever accountability is demanded, it is the card of democracy that is immediately raised.
The three Governments of the Alliance of Sahel States mentioned that ECOWAS has abandoned the Pan-African principles and ideals upon which it was formed. This is not a surprise to the African people who have known it for long but have waited for someone powerful to voice it out.
ECOWAS and regional bodies have become a stumbling block to Africa’s progress due to their inability to defend the continent and on the contrary have integrated themselves with neocolonialism to continue the exploitation of the African people.
This joint statement by the revolutionaries in Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso mentioned that; ECOWAS has become a menace to its member states and its own people. It further mentioned the inhumane and irrational sanctions by this group which had integrated itself with France who had toppled their single currency ECO in connivance with a puppet president called Qattara in Ivory Coast who amended the constitution to extend his illegal 3rd term.
