By Michael Olukayode
The departure of Dr Omar Alieu Touray as President of the ECOWAS Commission closes a four-year chapter in the history of West Africa’s foremost regional organisation, but it also opens one of its most uncertain.
Touray, a Gambian diplomat who took charge of the Commission in 2022, leaves office after presiding over a period in which the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) was tested by military coups, worsening insecurity, economic pressures and, most significantly, the withdrawal of Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger from the regional bloc.
The formal handover of the Commission’s statutory leadership is scheduled for Monday, August 31, in Abuja, bringing the Touray era to a close and ushering in a new leadership at a defining moment for the 51-year-old organisation.
His exit is therefore more than a routine change of guard. It provides an opportunity to assess not only the record of his administration but also the direction of an organisation that has been fundamentally altered during his tenure.
Created in Lagos on May 28, 1975, ECOWAS was conceived principally as an instrument for economic integration. Over five decades, however, it developed into much more than a trading bloc, assuming responsibilities in peacekeeping, conflict resolution, democratic governance, humanitarian intervention, health, infrastructure and regional security.
Touray inherited this expansive institution in 2022 at a time when many of its traditional assumptions were already under strain.
His four years in office would subsequently be dominated by a succession of political and security crises that tested the limits of ECOWAS’s authority and its ability to hold its members together.
A presidency defined by turbulence
The most consequential development of the Touray years was the rupture with the Sahelian states.
Following military takeovers, Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger increasingly came into confrontation with ECOWAS over the restoration of constitutional government, sanctions and the bloc’s approach to regional security.
The crisis eventually resulted in the three countries withdrawing from ECOWAS and strengthening their alternative regional arrangement under the Alliance of Sahel States.
For an organisation whose central philosophy has been regional integration, the departure of three member states represented perhaps the most serious institutional setback in its history.
It also exposed the limits of ECOWAS’s traditional approach to political crises.
The organisation had established itself as one of Africa’s strongest regional defenders of constitutional government, using diplomatic pressure and sanctions to discourage military takeovers.
But the recent coups demonstrated that the authority of regional institutions could not be taken for granted.
The sanctions imposed on military regimes generated criticism in some quarters, with concerns that the economic consequences were being felt by ordinary citizens. At the same time, ECOWAS faced the difficult argument that failing to respond to unconstitutional changes of government could encourage further military interventions.
Touray’s administration was consequently forced to navigate a difficult balance between defending regional democratic principles and preserving the cohesion of the community.
What ECOWAS built before Touray
Yet the difficulties of the past four years should not obscure the broader record of ECOWAS.
Since 1975, the organisation has achieved considerable progress in bringing West African countries closer together.
The free movement regime remains one of its most visible achievements. Millions of citizens across the region have benefited from arrangements that facilitate travel, residence and economic activity across national borders.
The ECOWAS Trade Liberalisation Scheme and the Common External Tariff have similarly provided a framework for expanding intra-regional commerce and moving the region towards a common market.
The organisation has also played a historic role in peace and security.
Through ECOMOG, ECOWAS intervened in devastating conflicts in Liberia and Sierra Leone, demonstrating that the regional bloc could mobilise collectively when national crises threatened wider regional stability.
Its responsibilities later expanded to mediation, conflict prevention, peacebuilding and the defence of constitutional order.
In infrastructure and energy, ECOWAS has promoted regional projects aimed at connecting economies that were separated by colonial-era boundaries. The West African Power Pool, for instance, represents an attempt to make electricity a regional rather than purely national resource.
The organisation has also developed regional cooperation in agriculture, health and humanitarian affairs.
Under Touray, these areas remained part of the Commission’s agenda.
The implementation of the ECOWAS Vision 2050 continued, with emphasis on regional integration, trade, mobility, youth employment, agriculture, healthcare and development.
The West African Health Organisation also continued regional cooperation in disease surveillance and emergency preparedness. The distribution of 30 medical ambulances to member states was among the practical interventions highlighted during the period.
These initiatives underline an important point: the Touray presidency cannot be measured only by the political crises that dominated headlines.
The unfinished business
But ECOWAS’s long history also contains a catalogue of unfinished ambitions.
The proposed single currency, the Eco, remains unrealised despite decades of planning.
Intra-regional trade remains below its potential, while traders and travellers continue to face cumbersome border procedures, non-tariff barriers, delays and other obstacles.
Regional agreements are frequently undermined by weak implementation at the national level, reflecting the continuing tension between national sovereignty and regional integration.
Security is perhaps the most pressing unresolved challenge.
Despite years of cooperation, terrorism and violent extremism have continued to devastate parts of the Sahel and threaten to spread towards coastal West Africa.
The emergence of the Alliance of Sahel States has added another layer to the security equation, with countries that once operated within ECOWAS now pursuing a separate political and security path.
What Touray leaves behind
It is against this background that Touray’s departure acquires significance.
He leaves behind an ECOWAS that is still one of Africa’s most important regional institutions, but one that is no longer the same organisation he inherited in 2022.
The region has become more politically fragmented. Trust between some member states and the regional institution has weakened. The security environment has deteriorated, while the organisation’s traditional mechanisms for responding to political crises have been subjected to unprecedented scrutiny.
Yet the institution itself has survived.
Touray’s final months in office were marked by farewell engagements with regional leaders, including Côte d’Ivoire’s President Alassane Ouattara, as he prepared to hand over after four years at the helm.
His departure thus offers a moment for both reflection and recalibration.
The incoming leadership will inherit the responsibility of protecting the achievements accumulated since 1975 while addressing the weaknesses that have become increasingly apparent.
It will have to restore confidence in ECOWAS as an institution that delivers tangible benefits to ordinary West Africans, rather than one perceived principally through the lens of sanctions and political disputes.
It will also face the delicate question of relations with Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger and whether the fractures created during the Touray years can eventually be narrowed.
A new test for an old institution
The central question confronting ECOWAS after Touray is no longer simply how to deepen integration.
It is how to keep West Africa together in an era of growing political fragmentation.
The organisation has demonstrated over the past five decades that regional cooperation is possible. It has made movement across borders easier, established mechanisms for trade and created a regional framework for responding to conflict and political instability.
But the events of the past four years have shown that institutions alone cannot guarantee unity.
The next leadership will therefore be judged not merely by the number of protocols it adopts or summits it convenes, but by whether it can rebuild trust, improve regional security, remove barriers to commerce and make integration meaningful to citizens.
Touray leaves at a crossroads.
His four-year tenure will be remembered for an ECOWAS that confronted some of its deepest crises since its creation—and for an organisation that emerged from those crises smaller in membership, more politically divided and facing a fundamental question about its future.
The end of the Touray era is, therefore, not simply the end of one administration. It is the beginning of a new test of whether ECOWAS can turn its historic achievements into a renewed project of West African unity.
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