The Ad-hoc committee in charge of the election of members of the ECOWAS Parliament through direct universal suffrage has presented recommendations to the Plenary of the community parliament for consideration.
The report was presented by the Ad-hoc committee at regional parliament’s Virtual 2020 Second Ordinary Session held in 2021.
The report was signed by the Deputy Speaker of the Nigeria House of Representative Idris Wase, who doubles as the 1st Deputy speaker of the ECOWAS Parliament, and chair of the Ad-hoc committee.
The report recalled that the election of members by direct universal suffrage was part of the new mandate conferred on the Parliament by the adoption of the Supplementary Act enhancing the powers of the Parliament, and this has overtime been omitted.
Highlights of the recommendation includes that Parliament should endeavor to achieve the election of Members to the ECOWAS Parliament by direct universal suffrage before the end of the 5th Legislature.
According to the report, “despite the operational challenges and financing, the study on the election of Members should continue.”
“Thematic meetings on specific areas such as financing, an electoral code, code of good conduct and qualifications for elections, should be organized as soon as possible.”
“Key institutional stakeholders such as the Authority of Heads of State, Council of Ministers, ECOWAS Commission and the Court of Justice should be consulted on the mission of Parliament to elect its members by direct universal suffrage”.
The committee further recommended that a prominent citizen of the community should be appointed champion, to lead the advocacy on the process.
Reacting to the recommendation given by the Ad-hoc committee at Plenary, Halidou Nassirou (Niger) said “for Parliament to move to the state of Universal Adult Suffrage, we need a transition.
Parliament should copy the example of the European Union Parliament, before they went for direct voting; there was a transition that is why I propose that this process should have a transition period.
“This presentation does not make room for any transition, we cannot move from one system to the other, there should be a transition even if we have to send a mission to the European Union Parliament to see how they did it, and we really have to do that to get the modalities”.
Clement Kofi Humado of Ghana responded to the concern raised, “Indeed I was a member of the Ad-hoc Committee that deliberated in Lagos, I have listened to the concern of my colleagues, I think part of the concerns arose because we jumped from the introduction to the recommendations because the summary of presentation in the discussion that we had dealt with all the concerns that was raised.
“We are saying that very many steps need to be undertaken before we finally reach the point where a decision is firmly taken to implement the program of universal adult suffrage;
“The report is not saying that as soon as we adopt this report then the process starts. “
“The transition period given is about four years, it is just like how ECOWAS also have put in program for monetary union, so when the target date is being approached and we see that we have not done satisfactory effort, then the target can be changed again;
“I think that we need to start this process of considering what should be involved for direct universal suffrage, we should work with three or four years to see how far we have reached, then a final decision will be taken”, Mr. Clement added.
The draft recommendation was received and adopted by the Plenary for further deliberation at the forth coming Extra-Ordinary Session of the Parliament.
While waiting for this system to take effect, the National Assemblies of the Member States or the institutions or equivalent bodies elect members of the ECOWAS Parliament from within them at the moment.
Under Article 18 of the Additional Act of December 2016 on the Strengthening of the Prerogatives of Parliament, members of the Community Assembly are to be elected by direct universal suffrage by the citizens of the Member States.
Dominica Nwabufo
