West African leaders have delivered a sobering collective warning that democracy across the region is under intensifying strain and must urgently begin producing tangible results for citizens or risk losing the public legitimacy that sustains it, as the Economic Community of West African States Parliament opened its 2026 First Ordinary Session in Abuja against a backdrop of rising insecurity, recurring military coups, and deepening public disillusionment.
Nigeria’s Speaker of the House of Representatives, Tajudeen Abbas, set the tone with a pointed assessment of the state of democratic governance in the sub-region, arguing that the central question facing the region was no longer whether democracy remained the preferred system of government but whether it was delivering sufficiently to sustain that preference. He warned that governance failures in security, economic stability, and public welfare were creating conditions in which unconstitutional changes of government could find receptive audiences among frustrated citizens.
“The issue is not whether democracy remains the preferred system, but whether it is delivering sufficiently to sustain that preference,” Abbas said, cautioning that continued failures would only expand the space for instability and further democratic reversals.
He pushed forcefully for the transformation of the ECOWAS Parliament into a body with genuine legislative authority rather than the purely advisory status it currently holds, arguing that a parliament with limited influence could not adequately respond to democratic reversals, security pressures, and economic uncertainty of the kind the region was currently experiencing. He said previous reform proposals had yet to be fully implemented and that the present crisis across the region made their realization more urgent than ever.
Abbas also defended Nigeria’s economic reform programme, including fuel subsidy removal and exchange rate unification, as difficult but necessary decisions implemented within a democratic framework, pointing to increased fiscal transfers to subnational governments and improved infrastructure investment capacity as early evidence of their benefits.
ECOWAS Parliament Speaker Hadja Mémounatou Ibrahima echoed the concern about regional instability, declaring that peace in West Africa could not be decreed by authority but had to be deliberately and patiently constructed through dialogue, cooperation, and mutual respect among member states. She announced that the upcoming ECOWAS Future Summit scheduled for May 21 in Lomé, Togo, would address how regional integration could be strengthened and adapted to the evolving political, economic, and security realities confronting the bloc.
