OSIWA: Democracy in West Africa declining steeper than in other regions

Mathias Hounkpe, political governance programme manager at Open Society Initiative for West Africa (OSIWA), says democracy in West Africa is declining steeper than in other regions.

Speaking on Thursday at a ‘Stakeholder Engagement on 20 Years of Implementation of the ECOWAS Protocol on Democracy and Good Governance’ organised by Goodluck Jonathan Foundation (GJF), Hounkpe called for better governance to address recent speedy decline in democracy in West African countries.

He said a recent research conducted by OSIWA in collaboration with Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) revealed that there was a decline in democratic index across the globe but the decline in West Africa was steeper.

“When you compare liberal democracy in Africa, you will see that West African countries are doing better compare to other economic communities in the region,” he said.

“When you also compare democracy in West Africa to other continents in the World, you we see that we are doing well.

“You can also notice that from 1990 to 2010, you see the progress of democracy in West Africa, but since 2017, we started seeing a decline.

“Democracy is declining everywhere but in West Africa the decline is deeper compare to other regions of the world.”

He said in recent times there have been restrictions in the civic space for citizens to express themselves in the region.

“We need to do everything that we can to make sure that citizens contribute to decisions that have to do with public policies, and so on,” he said.

“We need to make sure that our governments are account to citizens.”

He, however, said in spite of the challenges, people of the sub-region still preferred democratic governance to other forms of government.

Ann Iyonu, executive director of the GJF, described the event as one of the contributions of the foundation to making democracy in West Africa stronger.

She said the meeting was to assess level of compliance and to identify the challenges hindering the implementation of the protocol adopted in 2001.

She said: “It is 20 years of the supplementary protocol on good governance and democracy, we are asking ourselves; how has the compliance been? How has implementation of the protocol been.”

Iyonu said the foundation intends to send its recommendations to ECOWAS for consideration.