Following claims that Nigerian applicants are being passed over for positions and promotions, Nigeria is threatening to leave the regional organization Ecowas.
Some people have also expressed concerns about nepotism, claiming that friends and family members occasionally get chosen for positions instead of following due process.
The speaker of the Ecowas parliament, Sidie Tunis, has ordered a suspension of all hiring for the organization and established a team to look into any potential wrongdoing and report back within a week.
According to the terms of the founding protocols of the body, the leadership of the Ecowas parliament has declared that it will support and defend the rights of all members of the community to pursue posts in any Ecowas institution.
ECOWAS was formed in 1975 and it’s a community of West African Nations.
The 15 member nations of the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas) was created to encourage economic union.
What’s happening now
- Ahmed Idris Wase, the head of the Nigerian delegation and the first deputy speaker of the ECOWAS Parliament as well as the deputy speaker of the Nigerian House of Representatives, declared that it was now essential for Nigeria to reevaluate its participation in the group and its usefulness.
- This development follows a recently exposed biased recruiting process at the ECOWAS parliament that was clearly manipulated to exclude Nigeria in favour of the personal interests of other member states.
- The lawmakers noted Nigeria’s significant financial contributions to the organization despite its internal security issues and claimed there was no equivalent return on investment for Nigeria in ECOWAS for all that the nation had done and continues to do for the region since the organization’s founding in 1975.
What He’s saying
In Ahmed Idris Wase’s words “If you are in a system, and you are not getting the right results, where you are investing your money, it pays best to walk out of the union. In a situation where we are having an infrastructural deficit and witnessing security challenges, why should we continue to invest our money where it will not benefit our country?