NEWS– The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) chairman Bola Tinubu has today February 12th 2024 arrived in Senegal to meet President Macky Sall over postponed elections.
President Sall’s decision to push back the February 25th presidential vote has plunged Senegal into one of its worst crises since independence from France in 1960.
Nigerian President Bola Tinubu is meeting his Senegalese counterpart, Macky Sall in the capital city Dakar, as a constitutional crisis continues there over the postponement of elections initially scheduled for this month.
President Tinubu, was in Dakar for a one-day trip days after the Economic Community of West African States Foreign Ministers held emergency talks in Nigeria’s capital Abuja.
Protests pitting the youth against security forces have turned increasingly violent in a country long seen as a haven of stability and democracy in West Africa, a region that has recently been roiled by military coups and unrest.
The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has urged Senegal one of its most stable member states to return to its election timetable, but critics have already questioned the group’s sway over increasingly defiant member states.
The Economic Community of West African States Foreign Ministers met in Abuja last week, without representatives of the military-led countries of Niger, Burkina Faso, and Mali which announced withdrawal from the bloc in January and Guinea which was also suspended from the bloc for a coup was also not in attendance.
The turmoil in Senegal has also brought the almost 50-year-old Economic Community of West African States broader role into doubt, especially after its warning of military intervention in Niger last year fizzled out with no sign the country’s toppled president is closer to being restored.
President Sall said that he postponed the election because of a dispute between Parliament and the Constitutional Council over potential candidates barred from running.
He has said he wants to begin a process of “appeasement and reconciliation” and reiterated a commitment not to stand for a third term amid expressions of international concern.
However, opposition leaders have denounced the move as a “constitutional coup” and condemned the crackdown on protesters, but Senegal parliament backed the move to postpone the elections and voted to keep President Sall in office until his successor takes over, which is unlikely before early 2025, yet his second term is expected to end on April 2nd 2024.
