AN APPRAISAL OF THE CONCEPT AND PRACTICE OF ECONOMIC INTEGRATION UNDER INTERNATIONAL LAW:A CASE STUDY OF ECOWAS
CHAPTER ONE
GENERAL INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background of the Study
The concept and practice of economic integration between or among states has an old history.
By literature available to the researcher, it dates back long before the period of the Berlin Conference in 1884, when African nations thrived on cooperation and community life to resolve challenges and develop their communities . Relative to the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), it is as old as the community itself. Indeed, it is the raison d‘être for the formation of the community. Article 3 of the ECOWAS treaty sets out the aims and objectives which among others are to promote cooperation and integration leading to the establishment of an economic union.
West Africa is the part of Africa that is bounded in the West and South by the Atlantic Ocean, the Sahara desert on the North, and on the East by the eastern boundaries of present day Nigeria. Practically, it is that area of Africa that is encircled in the North by a line running from the Senegal River to Lake Chad, in the East by a line running from Lake Chad Basin to the Cameroon Mountains, and in the south and west, by the Atlantic Ocean coastline.
Traditionally, the peoples of West Africa have earned their living from the land which accounts for why agriculture remains the bedrock of all other indigenous economic activity in West Africa. Other occupations such as trade and craft manufacture were rather undertaken on a part time basis, while additional types of productive enterprises were often made possible by the financial surplus from agriculture. The arrival of the Europeans on the west coast of Africa between the 17th and 18th centuries drastically changed the nature of economic activities in West Africa, resulting in a ‗profitable trans-national commercial enterprise‘ which for centuries severely retarded socio-economic development throughout West Africa. Also, the resultant partitioning and subsequent introduction of European colonial governance in West Africa with its colonial policy of legitimate trade in one or two cash crops to serve the industrial needs of Europe further worsened the resultant erosion of indigenous industrial skills and the basis for the development of sustainable interactive economic activities throughout West Africa.
In consequence therefore, by the time most of the new nation states of West Africa gained their independence in the 1960‘s, they were left with structurally fragile and highly disarticulated economies with inherent acute and devastating price distortions in the international commodity market.
Efforts to co-ordinate economic cooperation on a sub-regional level in West Africa dates back to 1963, with a conference on industrial harmonization in the sub-region in Lagos, Nigeria, followed by the Niamey conference on economic cooperation in 1966. Similarly in 1967, another conference was held in Accra, Ghana where a tentative agreement on the Articles of Association of a proposed economic community in West Africa was signed.
An interim Council of ministers mandated to prepare a Draft Treaty for the proposed community recommended that the inaugural meeting of the proposed community be held at the level of Heads of State and Government. Though the Heads of State and Government actually met in Monrovia in 1968 and signed the protocol for a regional group, neither the Draft Treaty nor the Protocol on customs union submitted by the interim council was adopted.
In 1972, the process was revived by the Heads of State of Nigeria and Togo by mandating their officials to streamline a framework for community cooperation based on the following guiding principles:
a) That, the envisaged economic community should cut across linguistic and cultural differences.
b) Should pursue limited realizable objectives.
c) Approach adopted should be flexible and practical.
d) Necessary institutions are to be adopted allowing all countries to become members at their convenience.
The proposals of a joint Nigeria-Togolese delegation embodied in a Draft Treaty was recon-
sidered in yet another ministerial meeting in January 1975, and finally signed on 28 May,
1975, by the Heads of State and Government/ Representatives of the fifteen member states of West Africa, thus, marking the end of over a decade of strenuous effort to institutionalize a framework for coordinating sustainable development and collective self-reliance in West Africa.
ECOWAS was therefore established in 1975 to coordinate and promote trade, cooperation and sustainable development throughout West Africa. The signing of the ECOWAS Treaty of Lagos in May 28, 1975, was indeed a kind of radical response to the plague of poverty and underdevelopment bedevilling West Africa, and as a result, practically provided the much desired framework for the realization of rapid and sustainable socio-political and economic development throughout the sub-region, and has till date the following member states: Republic of Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Cote d‘Ivoire, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone and the Republic of Togo.
All these countries differ considerably in their colonial history, natural resource endowments and institutional and administrative systems. At the one end of the scale is Nigeria, rich in human and natural resources, and at the other end is Burkina Faso with poor human and natural resources. These remarkable differences significantly and constantly shape their regional relations and their ability to participate meaningfully in regional economic integration programmes.
The ECOWAS Treaty provided for a gradual establishment of a customs union, common external tariff and harmonization of economic and financial policies of member states within a period of 15 years. It also made provision for compensation for losses encountered by member states in the course of the implementation of the provisions of the treaty.
The original treaty was revised in 1993, to broaden economic integration and increase political participation and cooperation throughout the sub-region. The revised treaty sought to attain an integrated common market and a single monetary union with an institutionalized Parliament for stronger political cooperation and participation within the sub-region.
1.2 Literature Review
Because of its relative recentness, the topic of this research has not enjoyed much writing by scholars. Those who did, have tended to show the increasing interface between constitutionalism, rule of law and economic prosperity resulting from regional economic integration, which basically involves the harmonization of economic, social, political and legal objectives.
Among the few works on the subject of research are the works reviewed below.
Adewoye, O. states that constitutionalism or the rule of law, simply denotes a set of principles in the governance of a polity; effective restraints upon the powers of those who govern, the guarantee of individual fundamental rights (ranging from freedom of speech and expression to the right to privacy), the existence of an independent judiciary to enforce these rights, genuine periodic elections by universal suffrage, and the enthronement of the rule of law as reflected in the absence of arbitrariness, and the equality of all before the law. He said this is basic to regional integration, particularly as it constitutes an important reason for the success of the European Union. He states that West African states have barely begun instituting constitutionalism as a mode of governance, and it is therefore not surprising that their efforts at economic integration have met with little success.
He contrasts the European experience with that of Africa with emphasis on the constraints to regional integration resulting from the very different pattern of law and politics observed in Africa. He posits that constitutionalism fundamentally explains the success of the European Union because it entrenched the notion of a limited state whose will could be subjected to that of a supranational authority in specific areas of activity. He further states that constitutionalism was so fundamental to the operation of the Union that Greece, Portugal, and Spain had to throw off the shackles of dictatorship in their domestic politics and rejoin the mainstream of Western European democracy, before they could be admitted to membership of the EU in the 1980s.
Furthermore, according to Adewoye , the problem begins with the political philosophy of nations, which he argues is fundamentally different in Africa from Europe where a long tradition of ―constitutionalism‖ makes it easier to accept limits upon the exercise of power. This in turn has made it easier to engineer the sharing of sovereignty with regional levels of government and justice in Europe than in Africa. Supra-nationality in Africa is therefore unlikely to materialize in a significant way until constitutionalism itself becomes more strongly entrenched at the national level. Adewoye5 advocates using the ECOWAS framework itself as a tool for promoting constitutionalism, through the operation of a tribunal, as foreseen in the revised ECOWAS Treaty, which might become increasingly capable of enforcing human rights and checking abuses of power by national governments.
Thoughtful and incisive as these postulations are, there is the need to lend cognisance to the fact that conditions in the sub-region are strikingly different from those that exist in a Europe which was already relatively industrialised, before it embarked on regional integration anchored on constitutionalism. It must be noted that there are problems that may be unique to countries and regions at various stages of development. Some of these challenges range from the presence of unsustainable states, near failing states, corruption, ethnic and religious intolerance, genocide and military rapaciousness, mostly exacerbated by poverty and weak institutions. It will therefore hold that constitutionalism, standing alone, would not address adequately, all problems or challenges to regional economic integration.
Additionally, considerable note was not taken of the fact that the objective of economic integration in developed regions such as the European Union differs from those of developing states. In the former, the objective is to maintain and enhance already existing economic growth, whereas, in the latter, such as ECOWAS, the ultimate purpose is either to achieve an acceleration of economic growth in member states given the scarce resources available or maintain the same rate of growth as before integration, but at a lower cost in term of use of scarce resources.
It is widely recognized that existing regional institutions will not succeed until the principle of supra-nationality is firmly established, as increasingly seems to be the intent with the signing of the Abuja Treaty, the revised ECOWAS Treaty, and the West African Economic and Monetary Union (UEMOA) Treaty. Each of these projects involves movement in the direction of increased supra-nationality through the creation of a regional parliament, the strengthening of a regional tribunal or court of justice, and some move away from rule by consensus, toward qualified majority rule.
Contents