By Paul Ejime

Nigeria’s former Head of State, General Ibrahim Babangida, who was instrumental in the formation of ECOMOG, the regional Ceasefire Monitoring Group set up by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) to end the civil war in Liberia, has made a strong case for the national recognition of journalists who risked their lives in reporting that conflict.

“With a look back into history, I think one thing that the government needed to do for journalists who risked their lives to cover the highly volatile Liberian civil war, but which was not done, was to decorate them with requisite national medals.

That patriotic act, I believe, could still be considered, and rewarded by the government of the day,” declared Gen. Babangida, represented by Ambassador Tunde Adeniran, Nigeria’s former envoy to Germany at a recent book presentation and the 70th Anniversary celebration of one of the ECOMOG journalists, Dr. Olusegun Aderiye.

By the nature of their professional training and practice, journalists report the news. They are not always the newsmakers or the subject of the news.

This metaphor aptly sums up the story of the ten Nigerian journalists who were embedded in the maiden Mission of the ECOWAS Ceasefire Monitoring Group (ECOMOG) deployed to Liberia in August 1990.

In the official letter of their deployment from Dodan Barracks, the then seat of the Federal Military Government, the journalists then working for Federal Government-owned media Organizations, including this writer, as a Diplomatic Correspondent of the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), were on “a National Assignment.”

They could neither turn down a patriotic duty nor disobey a “marching order” by the usually media-savvy Military Government of President Babangida to serve their country or the region.

However, before the journalists joined the Nigerian Military contingent by air to the Port Elizabeth Harbour in Freetown, Sierra Leone, ECOMOG’s point of departure to the Freeport in Monrovia, the whereabouts of two of their professional colleagues who had left Nigeria much earlier to cover the Liberian civil war, was unknown and they were presumed dead.

It later emerged that Tayo Awotunsin of the Champion newspapers and Kris Imodibe from the Guardian stable were killed by the rebel National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL) led by Charles Taylor, who launched the rebellion against then President Samuel Doe on Christmas Eve of 1989. Doe was executed by Taylor’s ally-turned-enemy Prince Yormie Johnson of the Independent National Patriotic Front of Liberia (INPFL), who captured him at the ECOMOG Freeport base.

The INPFL was a breakaway faction of the NPFL. Taylor was vehemently opposed to ECOWAS’ intervention in Liberia and vowed reprisal attacks against Nigerians, including journalists.

Established on the 10th of August 1990 with an initial strength of 3,000 troops, ECOMOG as the first of its kind in the region and the African continent, was the product of the first session of the ECOWAS Standing Mediation Committee held in Banjul, the Gambia, under the chairmanship of the then-President Dauda Jawara. The Heads of State of Ghana, Guinea, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Mali, and Togo, and the then Organization of African Unity (OAU), also attended that meeting with members of the Interfaith Mediation Committee as observers.

After noting the wanton destruction of human life and property and the displacement of persons caused by the armed conflict, the meeting called on all parties involved in the conflict to observe an immediate ceasefire and surrender all arms and ammunition to the custody of ECOMOG.

Against all odds, Operation Liberty as the Mission was called, was launched on Thursday, 23rd of August 1990 from the Freetown Port, under the command of Ghanaian Lt-Gen. Arnold Quainoo, with the ECOMOG troops sailing to Monrovia in a convoy of two main vessels, Nigeria’s Naval ship NNS Ambe and Ghanaian merchant ship MV Tano River.

There were also support gunboats contributed by Ghana – GNS Yogaga and GNS Achimota – and two attack crafts NNS Ekpe, and NNS Damisa, contributed by Nigeria, with a tugboat, Dolphin Mira. All the vessels berthed at the Monrovia Freeport by 1700hrs on the 24th of August 1990 with the ten journalists on NNS Ambe and amid fierce fighting between Taylor’s NPFL rebels and Johnson’s INPFL forces. Heavy gun fires rent the air, punctuated by mortar bombings lasting until late evening.

The peacekeepers were received by Prince Johnson, who narrated how his INPFL forces fought and dislodged Taylor’s NPFL rebels from the Freeport area for ECOMOG vessels to land.

Some of the ten Nigerian journalists might not have experienced war before their deployment to Liberia, but they were fired by patriotism, and the palpable courage and enthusiasm demonstrated by the ECOMOG military contingents contributed by Nigeria, Ghana, Guinea, Sierra Leone, and the Gambia for the maiden Peacekeeping Mission.

Telecommunications technology had only developed to the level of Satellite phones, which Taylor used to great effect, but mobile phones and the internet were not available then, so most journalists in developing countries, who could not afford the luxury of satellite phones, relied mainly on telex and fax for the transmission of their stories.

While Western journalists such as Elizabeth Blunt of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), also travelled to Liberia with their satellite phones to facilitate their coverage of the war, Nigerian journalists like the Biblical disciples of Jesus Christ, went “without a purse, a sack or sandals.”

They had their pens, writing materials, tape recorders, and cameras. It was an emergency military operation and time was too short for them to take the advance payment of their eligible subsistence allowance.

Food and where to sleep were no big issues. The journalists and troops shared the available rations and slept at different military bases or inside the vessels.

The journalists knew they were not in Liberia on holiday or a picnic, but to provide factual and timely information from the war front to the public.

But it was wartime. The National Telecommunications offices, like most businesses in Liberia, were closed or inaccessible. For more than three weeks, the journalists were sitting on a goldmine of war stories, including from interviews and their close shaves with death.

Out of frustration, they joined an oil tanker from Monrovia to Freetown, Sierra Leone, where officials of the Nigerian High Commission, particularly Ambassador Joe Keshi, then Deputy High Commissioner at the High Commission, assisted the journalists in couriering their first news reports back to Nigeria.

Apart from the ten journalists from the government-owned media, some private Nigerian media organizations also dispatched their reporters to cover the Liberian civil war, even as Imodibe and Awotunsin became part of the estimated 250,000 souls lost in the two-phased civil war, which ended in 2003.

BBC’s Elizabeth Blunt was awarded Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) by the British Government for her reportage of the Liberian civil war. However, the contributions of the Nigerian journalists who kept the public informed on the war, sometimes at the risk of their own lives, have remained unacknowledged even by the Federal Government, which sent them on that national assignment.

The records of service of the ten journalists, including the two who have passed on to glory, and could be honoured posthumously, are available. Also deserving of the honour are journalists who served as Press Secretaries to ECOMOG Field Commanders. One of them, Frank Akinola, formerly of the Daily Times, passed on recently, almost unsung.
The ten journalists and their other colleagues took symbolic military ranks and integrated very well into the environment under which they served during the ECOMOG Mission as illustrated by the attached picture.

L-R: WO II Samuel Ajakaiye (regular soldier photographer, GHQ Dodan Barracks, Pius Iyaniwura (ADC to Commander, ECOMOG Press Corps), Tony Verrisimo, GHQ Dodan Barracks (Pay Master General), Pius Akpan, cameraman, GHQ (Director, Welfare Service & Supply), the late Odafe Othihiwa, Daily Times (Commander ECOMOG Press Corps), Ibrahim Yakassai, New Nigerian Newspapers (Chief of Logistics), Kayode Komolafe Guardian Newspapers (Adjutant-General), Olusegun Aderiye, Nigerian Television Authority NTA (Quarter Master General), the late Yemi Fakayejo, Voice of Nigeria (Provost Mashall), and Paul Ejime, News Agency of Nigeria (Chief of Staff).

Long before General Babangida’s advocacy, Dr. Aderiye and this writer had wondered aloud why journalists are so treated by successful governments. But with the recommendation now coming from high quarters, the President Bola Tinubu administration is unlikely to miss the opportunity of doing the needful.

It is also unclear if ECOMOG soldiers have been sufficiently acknowledged for their valour in Liberia and Sierra Leone. Consistent with the standard practice, cenotaphs/tombs ought to be erected in Nigeria, Liberia, and Sierra Leone in honour of fallen ECOMOG soldiers for history and posterity.

Such recognition/acknowledgment of national service will serve as an incentive to engender patriotism in other citizens going forward.

**Ejime, a former War Correspondent, is a Global Affairs Analyst and Consultant on Peace & Security and Governance*

By Paul Ejime

When former President Macky Sall shook hands and handed the mantle of leadership to his successor President Bassirou Diomaye Faye, Senegal’s 5th, and youngest, on the 2nd of April 2024, he might have wondered what could have been, the “what ifs” and “if onlys.”

After serving as Prime Minister and Speaker/President of the National Assembly under former President Abdoulaye Wade, and then president of the Republic for 12 years, Sall had the golden opportunity to exit power with dignity. But like most politicians, he became blinded by greed and the trappings of office such that he could not resist the bait of tenure elongation or “third-term syndrome,” which has destabilized some African countries and put ECOWAS, the regional economic bloc in a reputational quagmire.

Before 2021, Senegal held the hope as an anchor of stability in politically restive West Africa, which has acquired the dubious reputation as a “military coup zone.”

With an estimated 18 million predominantly Muslim population (more than 95% of Senegalese are Muslims), the country enjoys exemplary religious tolerance. It remains one of the two countries in West Africa yet to experience a military coup since its independence from France in 1960. The other exception is Cabo Verde.

To its credit, Senegal has also enjoyed relatively long periods of peaceful transfer of power from one government to another with Faye as its fifth and youngest president at age 44. Independent President Sedar Senghor and his successor Abdou Diouf, both served 20 years each, while the third and fourth presidents Wade and Sall were in power for 12 years each and both had attempted but failed to prolong their mandate.

Sall, who was at the forefront of the opposition against Wade’s third-term botched plan, must have been encouraged by ECOWAS’ weakness to rein in leaders who got away with impunity, changing national constitutions, vote rigging, or other forms of manipulations, considered as “political or constitutional coups,” which are as deadly as military putsches now on the increase in the region.

The change of Cote d’Ivoire’s constitution in 2016 by President Alassane Ouattara followed by the referendum and the 2020 national election which President Alpha Conde rushed through during the Covid-19 pandemic period in Guinea readily come to mind.

These undemocratic practices were usually followed by deadly violent street protests; devastating political divisions and served as triggers or drivers of political conflicts and instability in the countries involved and by extension, the region.

Senegal was not spared by Sall’s political misadventures. After three years of a political rollercoaster, he reluctantly announced that he would not be on the ballot for the 2024 presidential election originally fixed for 25 February. Meanwhile, the nation for the first time in its history, recorded more than 1,500 political detainees, including political opponents.

Faye himself was in jail awaiting trial on charges including contempt of court and defamation. The Sall government also proscribed the main opposition Coalition PASTEF led by popular opposition leader Ousmane Sonko, who was also tried and convicted for radicalising the youth, in what many observers considered as political persecution and a ploy to stop him from running for the presidency.

Sall’s authoritarianism and intolerance of opposition grew by the day. Contrary to the provisions of regional protocols, he sacked members of the electoral commission of Senegal a few months before the national election, and at least 20 Senegalese were killed in clashes with security forces during street protests against the government.

A day before the commencement of campaigns for the presidential election, Sall unleashed a presidential decree on his country, postponed the vote indefinitely, and instead, called for a so-called national dialogue.

Acting at the behest of the government, the National Assembly wadded into the political fray, and in a move similar to the invasion of the American Congress on 6 January 2021, paramilitary Gendarmes stormed Senegal’s National Assembly to evict opposition MPs to pave the way for the passage of a controversial law postponing the presidential election from February to December 2024.

The Constitutional Council, which has the final say on elections stepped in to nullify Sall’s decree and the controversial law passed by the Parliament. The Council also insisted that the election must be held before the 2nd of April, the end of Sall’s second term mandate.

This forced the Sall government to move the presidential vote from 25 February to 24 March 2024. Thanks to the resilience, commitment, and determination of the Senegalese population, especially the vibrant civil society groups, the Sonko-Faye opposition alliance prevailed with Faye beating Sall’s ruling APR party candidate, former Prime Minister Amadou Ba by 54% to 35% vote at the poll.

Balloting was generally peaceful on polling Day, with local and international observers describing the electoral process as transparent and all of Faye’s rivals conceding defeat before the announcement of poll results.

A humiliated Sall also congratulated Faye and wasted no time in flying out of the country as the new president and his political mentor Sonko, who has been appointed Prime Minister, settled down to the task of governance.

Some of the immediate challenges facing the new administration include healing a politically divided nation, empowering and gainfully engaging Senegal’s largely unemployed youthful population, fighting corruption, and growing the national economy, by optimizing the benefits from new sources of revenue – oil and gas.

It remains to be seen what the Faye-Sonko pair will make of political power, but the positive end to the political crisis in Senegal should be a turning point for the country to rediscover its democratic ethos.

Also, coming after another successful and transparent election in Liberia last June, ECOWAS should capitalize on this opportunity to convince four of its member States under military dictatorships that democracy and constitutional order are the way to go.

The retreat of democracy and growing instability in West Africa and the wider African continent today is within the context of the global landscape characterized by the decline of multilateralism, and the convergence of multiple threats and opportunistic vectors, such as terrorism and insecurity, geopolitical shifts, economic downturns, climate and environmental ecosystem changes, sociocultural dynamics, and digital advancements, especially the “invasion” of social media.

Even so, the erosion of freedom, deterioration of the state of the rule of law, and threats to democracy, after the euphoria that greeted the wave of multiparty democracy of the late 1990s and early 2000s in the ECOWAS region, had been encouraged largely by ineptitude, insincerity, sit-tight disposition of the political leaders and their refusal or inability to check political excesses among themselves.

As a trailblazer among the eight African Regional Economic Communities (RECs), ECOWAS’ achievements in conflict prevention, management, and resolution in Member States such as Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Cote d’Ivoire, Niger, and The Gambia, are well-documented.

The relevant, tested, and tried instruments and protocols are there, but political will and resolve to act are lacking. To whip military-ruled Mali, Guinea, Burkina Faso, and Niger back on the democratic line, ECOWAS leaders, the Commission, and other Institutions must demonstrate renewed commitment to upholding the regional integration principles.

For instance, provisions of the 2001 regional Supplementary Protocol on Democracy and Good Governance which emphasizes “zero tolerance” for unconstitutional change of government should apply to all “coups” whether political, constitutional, or ballot box coups.

Beyond the successes in Liberia and Senegal, warning signs are already ominously palpable in Togo, where the government is forcing through a dubious change from a presidential to a parliamentary system in a manner, that critics see as a ploy for tenure elongation, amid reported clamp down on the opposition and voices of dissent.

ECOWAS should not stand by and watch until situations deteriorate before it intervenes. At a time when the region should be consolidating on democracy, four of the 15 ECOWAS member States are ruled by soldiers, while three of the four have served notice of their intention to quit the regional organization.

Two other member States -The Gambia and Guinea Bissau, are hosting ECOWAS military stabilization Missions, due to instability, while regional leaders recently agreed that a similar Mission be dispatched to a third country, Sierra Leone.

Instead of propping up sitting governments with military missions, which some leaders are known to have misused against the opposition, ECOWAS should encourage Member States to eschew bad governance, and violations of citizens’ rights, but respect national constitutions, the rule of law, and also stop rigging elections.

Also, to avoid the growing criticism of foreign interference, ECOWAS should assert its independence with pro-West African critical thinking and strategic policy thrusts consistent with its vision of an ECOWAS of the People instead of an ECOWAS of State or Leaders.

Nigeria, the regional powerhouse, should also lead by example to reposition the organization, which it hosts and remains the biggest financial contributor, toward fulfilling its mandate and the objectives of its founding fathers. (Flowerbudnews)

*Ejime is a Global Affairs Analyst and Consultant on Peace & Security and Governance Communications*