Former Chief of Army Staff, General Tukur Buratai, rtd, has called for enhanced ECOWAS cooperation to combat terrorism and boost intra-regional trade at the 43rd Malam Aminu Kano memorial anniversary.
Gen Buratai, stated this at the 24th annual symposium with the theme “The ECOWAS and Regional Peace in West Africa:The Security and Economic Implications for Nigeria,” held at the Sa’adu Zungur Auditorium, Mambayya House, Kano State.
He warned that West Africa’s resurgence of military coups and transnational crime poses direct security and economic threats to Nigeria, saying no single country can defend itself alone.
“We can not fortify our borders alone,” the former ambassador to the Republic of Benin told an audience of governors, academics, security chiefs, and civil society leaders.
“No wall is high enough. No patrol is dense enough. The fight against terrorism, banditry, and organised crime requires joint operations, intelligence-sharing, and mutual trust.”
The retired general, who previously commanded troops in the Lake Chad Basin, said the return of unconstitutional changes of government across West Africa represents “a regression of the democratic ideals for which Mallam Aminu Kano fought.
“When the ballot is silenced by the bullet, the talakawa [common people] are the first to suffer,” he said.
Economic Integration
On economic integration, Gen Buratai described intra-regional trade as “dismally low,” citing persistent non-tariff barriers and heavily policed borders that undermine ECOWAS protocols.
He noted that the long-proposed single West African currency, the eco, remains elusive.
“The cost of these delays is paid by the ordinary trader, the cross-border merchant, the farmer who cannot sell his produce across the line drawn on a colonial map,” he said.
Gen Buratai rejected what he called a fashionable pessimism about ECOWAS, recalling joint military operations against Boko Haram involving Beninese, Chadian, and Nigerian forces.
“The institution is not the problem,” he said. “The problem is the gap between our commitments and our follow-through. Between our treaties and our implementation. Between our rhetoric of regionalism and our reality of unilateralism.”
Paying tribute to Malam Aminu Kano, who died 43 years ago, the former army chief described him as “not merely a politician but a movement – a teacher, philosopher, and regionalist who foresaw the need for West African cooperation decades ago”.
He called on Nigeria’s political class to honour Aminu Kano’s memory “not by naming roads after him, but by governing in the spirit he embodied – honesty, humility, and an unshakeable commitment to the welfare of the ordinary person.”
To West African youth, Gen Buratai urged cross-border engagement. “Carry your passport, learn a second West African language, trade across borders, and refuse to see your neighbours as foreigners.”
He concluded with a quote from the late Malam: “We must learn to live together as brothers, or perish together as fools.”
The annual symposium is organised by Mambayya House, Aminu Kano Centre for Democratic Studies, Bayero University, Kano.