Stakeholders want ECOWAS free movement protocol enforced

By Joe Adiorho

THE Principal Programme Officer of the Free Movement in the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), Mr. Tony Elumelu, yesterday, in Abuja, reiterated the urgent need to aggregate resources necessary towards ensuring that free movement along the West African coast is attained in the shortest possible time.


Stakeholders want ECOWAS free movement protocol enforced

advertisement

He said that after more than 30 years of the signing into existence of the Free Movement of Persons, Goods and Services Protocol by the heads of state of the member countries of ECOWAS, it has become imperative that all obstacles hindering the implementation are removed.

And at ECOWAS secretariat Abuja, the police and other security chiefs of the member countries were holding a conference to fashion out strategies to check the rising proliferation and the increasing free flow of the large and small arms movement across the borders of West Africa.

The Nigerian Inspector General of police (IG), Hafiz Ringim, who was the chief host and chairman of the conference, said that even though he supported the free movement of persons, goods and services along the West Coast, steps must be taken to stop the supply and movement of firearms along the coast.

According to him, "the ministers of security, the inspectors general of police and heads of judiciary of the countries that make up ECOWAS are meeting in order to fashion out modalities for crime fighting within the West African sub-region.

"We are trying to look in perspective the current security threat to the entire sub-region and also to discuss within ourselves how we can share information in order to achieve the best practices that can make our borders and investments secure so that the region will prosper and progress in the best possible manners.

"We are here also to discuss and find possible solutions to the basic problems of the movement of large weapons and small arms within and across the borders. We are critically looking at the issue of joint border patrol to check the movement of fire arms, which we believe, come from Cameroun, Chad, Niger and Mali."

Elumelu spoke when a delegation of Media Network for Free Movement, Integration and Cross Border Cooperation in West Africa paid a visit to the ECOWAS secretariat in Abuja to commensurate with the commission on the death of Mohammed Daramy, the commissioner for Trade, Industry and Tourism and Free Movement of Persons and Goods.

According to him, the only way to keep the memory of Daramy alive and compensate the great effort he made to enforce a borderless sub-region is to garner sufficient political will to implement the free movement protocol.

Not with Niger/Chad and Cameroon in question, it won't work!!!