ECOWAS Appoints Gambari to Lead 120 Observers to Senegal’s Presidential Election

•Regional body takes steps to remove bottlenecks in W’Africa palm oil industry

Michael Olugbode in Abuja

The Chief of Staff (COS) during President Muhammadu Buhari’s tenure, Prof. Ibrahim Gambari, has been appointed to lead a 120-member Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Election Observation Mission (EOM) to Senegal’s presidential election rescheduled to hold on March 24, 2024.

Gambari, was also at a time Nigeria’s former Foreign Minister, and United Nations Under-Secretary-General.

According to a statement yesterday, by ECOWAS Commission, the Mission includes 14 Long-Term Observers (LTOs), who are experts in various fields, such as constitutional and electoral laws, election operations, conflict management and prevention, political analysis, gender and inclusivity, and the media.

The statement stated they would be deployed this week and would be joined by 106 of their Short-Term colleagues from March 18, ahead of the crucial election featuring 19 presidential candidates, including one woman.

The short-term observers were drawn from the Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Electoral Commissions of the ECOWAS Member States, the ECOWAS Council of the Wise, the ECOWAS Parliament and Community Court of Justice, and Civil Society organisations in the region.

The statement further read that the EOM, which would support and monitor the electoral process to ensure that best practices would be supported by an ECOWAS Technical Team led by Ambassador Abdel-Fatau Musah, Commissioner for Political Affairs, Peace and Security and Mr. Serigne Ka, acting Head of the ECOWAS Electoral Assistance Division (EAD).

The President of the ECOWAS Commission, Dr. Omar Alieu Touray, according to the statement, approved the deployment of the EOM to Senegal in line with Articles 12 to 14 of the regional Supplementary Protocol on Democracy and Good Governance on support for member States holding elections.

Under Article 13 of the Supplementary Protocol, the Commission President had also deployed a pre-election fact-finding mission to Senegal from 26th November to 3rd December 2023. That Mission met with political stakeholders, including government officials, political parties, the National Electoral Commission, CENA, and non-state actors.

There are 7,033,854 registered voters from the country’s estimated population of 18,032,473, (49.4% females and 50.6% Males), slightly higher than the 6.7 million in the 2019 presidential election, which recorded about 66 per cent voter turn-out when the outgoing President Macky Sall won re-election with 58 per cent of the votes.

Sall is not on the ballot for the 2024 election initially scheduled for the 25th of February 2024.

Senegal was among the first countries in sub-Saharan Africa to hold multi-party presidential elections in 1978 before the wave of democratic transition in the 1990s. For this year’s election, some 338,040 Senegalese were registered in the diaspora.

The country has continued to hold presidential and legislative elections, sometimes marked by political tensions, but without significant threats to the stability of the country’s institutions.

Electioneering started on Sunday, the 9th of March. Voting officially opens from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., in 15,633 polling units of the 6,341 polling centers spread across the country’s 14 regions, including the capital Dakar.

The 19 presidential candidates cleared by the Constitutional Council include Amadou Ba, former Prime Minister, veteran opposition leader Idrissa Seck, and former Dakar Mayor Khalifa Sall.

The only female candidate is entrepreneur Anta Babacar Ngom. The second, a gynecologist Rose Wardini withdrew from the race before the 24 March 2024 date was announced following allegations that she also has dual citizenship.

If none of the 19 candidates obtains an absolute majority of votes, there would be a run-off vote between the two frontrunners 15 days after the official declaration of the final results of the first round.

ECOWAS Takes Steps to Remove Bottlenecks in Palm Oil Industry in West Africa

Meanwhile, ECOWAS has taken a step to boost the production of palm oil and its sales in the sub-region with a convocation of the meeting of stakeholders to evolve strategies to end the bottlenecks of the industry.

Palm oil which is referred to as red gold is indigenous to West Africa but various bottlenecks have made the subregion’s prominence to have dwindled and oftentimes depended on importation to even meet its need though there was no question about its capacity to mass produce.

Speaking at the Meeting of the Free Movement of Palm Oil under the ECOWAS Preferential Tariff Regime (ECOWAS Trade Liberalisation Scheme, ETLS) in Abuja, ECOWAS Commission’s Commissioner of Economic Affairs and Agriculture, Massandje Toure-Litse, said the meeting became inevitable to work out modalities for tackling challenges faced by stakeholders in palm oil industry in the sub-region.

Toure-Litse, said one of the challenges in palm oil trading in the region as taxation, adding that the ECOWAS ETLS had eradicated tariffs in business transactions within the region.

She added: “Some products will go to some countries and the countries will ask them to pay tariffs when we know that under ECOWAS law, goods produced in our region should be free of tax.

“We have invited all the countries to come and have a discussion to solve the issues in the commercialisation of palm oil in the region. The countries invited are Ivory Coast, Togo, Benin, Nigeria, Ghana and Liberia.”

On his part, ECOWAS Commission’s Director of Customs, Union and Taxation, Salifou Tiemtore, while lamenting that West African countries are not producing enough palm oil to meet members’ needs, said there is urgent need to increase production and ensure that bottlenecks affecting the industry are removed.

Tiemtore said: “Let me tell you the truth, till now, with the statistics we have, we still need to import palm oil. What we are producing is not enough for our own consumption.

“If you take a country like Nigeria, it has the capacity to double its production in terms of palm oil but we need to put in place some incentives so that through ECOWAS ETLS Nigeria can cover the Nigerian market and also go beyond the Nigerian market.”

He said the region has the potential to meet the needs of member states if support were given to entrepreneurs to expand production and take advantage of the ECOWAS ETLS.

In his address of welcome, the Head of the ECOWAS National Unit at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ambassador Yakubu Dadu, said despite the remarkable success of the ETLS, “we find ourselves facing challenges within the pivotal palm oil sector.

“The cross-border movement of palm oil has encountered origin-related disagreements among Member States, posing a threat to the sector’s stability and growth potential.

“It is in recognition of these challenges that we have gathered here today, united by a shared commitment to have frank discussions that would strengthen and protect the palm oil sector, ensuring its resilience against external competition.”