03/12/2025
By Muhammed Jallow
West Africa today stands at a crossroads where the promise of democratic renewal collides with a familiar, destructive refrain. Recent events in Guinea Bissau, the simmering tensions in Sierra Leone, and the fragile politics of Senegal must be read not as isolated national stories but as a regional alarm bell. When elections are disputed, when the ballot is treated as a battleground instead of a peaceful instrument of choice, the cost is not simply political. It is human, economic, and moral. The ripples of post election violence threaten the very foundations of progress across the Economic Community of West African States.
The abrupt military intervention in Guinea Bissau following a disputed presidential contest is a painful reminder of how quickly democratic gains can be erased. What began as a contested electoral process ended with soldiers seizing control of the capital and detaining political figures. The return to force undermines citizens faith in the ballot box and in the institutions supposed to protect them. It invites a regression to a cycle that has long blighted the sub region: coups, countercoups, impunity, and international condemnation that too often fades into inertia. The consequences are immediate and brutal. Political instability empties classrooms, shutters clinics, and diverts government attention from building roads and markets to securing palaces and military barracks. The international community has reacted with alarm. Regional bodies must do more than issue statements. They must act in concert to restore constitutional order and reassure a terrified citizenry.
Sierra Leone and Senegal carry their own burdens of political friction. In Sierra Leone, the democratic space remains fragile where unresolved grievances can be inflamed into street protests and confrontations. In Senegal, transitions of power in recent years have shown both the potency of popular mobilisation and the fragility of political settlements when large segments of society feel excluded. Where leaders fail to manage competition with patience and states fail to protect dissenters, the result is predictable. Peaceable dissent degrades into violent confrontation, and communities that once built markets and schools become arenas of suspicion. The human toll of such breakdowns is incalculable. It is children who miss years of schooling, mothers who lose access to health care, and entrepreneurs who postpone investment. These are losses that compound over decades and that no single government can bear alone.
Post election violence is not an academic problem. It corrodes development in measurable ways. Investors avoid jurisdictions where outcomes turn on force rather than law. Tourists and traders choose predictable markets and safe shores. International partners condition aid on stability and good governance. When ballots are inverted into bullets the economy contracts, jobs vanish, and the sciences of long term planning—education, health infrastructure, energy projects—are interrupted. Recurrent crises produce a brain drain. Young people who should be the architects of tomorrow emigrate, taking entrepreneurial energy and technical skills with them. In short, political violence is development squandered.
There is a lesson in our recent history that is both painful and instructive. The Gambia experienced such a crucible after the December 2016 election when the incumbent refused to accept defeat. The impasse degenerated into a national crisis that required robust regional engagement to resolve. ECOWAS stepped forward with a clear mandate to defend the will of the people and to restore democratic order. The intervention, supported by international friends, ultimately prevented a descent into a broader civil conflict. It demonstrated that determined regional action can avert catastrophe and restore democratic norms, but it also showed that delay and ambiguity invite risk. The Gambia's ordeal should be a permanent reminder that silence from leaders and tepid diplomacy are tantamount to complicity.
We must also study other tragedies to understand the long term costs of inaction. The post electoral crisis in Cote d'Ivoire in 2010 and 2011 left thousands dead and deepened identity fissures that took years to heal. The Mali coups and the ongoing malaise in parts of the Sahel have produced economic decline, humanitarian emergencies, and the proliferation of armed groups. These are not remote case studies. They are stark warnings about the trajectory awaiting any state where governance fails. The truth is unvarnished. Political impasses metastasize into security vacuums. Security vacuums are filled by those who traffic in fear. Fear destroys investment and erases the patient progress that development demands.
The regional cost is magnified when states fold in upon themselves. Ecowas was founded to promote economic integration and collective security. But institutions are only as strong as the political will that sustains them. When one member state collapses into lawlessness, it destabilises borders and supply chains, it creates refugee flows, and it invites illicit economies, including trafficking networks, to exploit the chaos. The recent flare up in Guinea Bissau risks exactly that. It threatens to become a staging ground for transnational crime and a corridor for the illicit flows that undermine governance everywhere. In times like this, the sub region cannot afford compartmentalised responses. Uncoordinated national policies will fail because the problems are shared and the actors are porous.
Post election violence also has a corrosive moral effect. It normalises the use of violence to settle disputes and it erodes the social compact between citizens and their leaders. When leaders pursue power with intolerance and citizens respond with anger, society loses the ability to conduct disputes with civility. That cultural erosion is perhaps the hardest to quantify. It is the slow disintegration of trust that prevents communities from cooperating on shared priorities. Trust is the oxygen of development. When it is poisoned, even the best policies suffocate.
This moment demands a clear and principled response. First, the United Nations, the African Union, and Ecowas must converge around a credible and rapid mechanism for crisis mediation and if necessary, enforcement. Statements of condemnation are necessary but not sufficient. We need a coordinated strategy that includes immediate steps to ensure the safety of civilians, secure release of detained leaders and election officials, the protection of electoral materials, and the transparent completion or repetition of elections under impartial supervision. International partners must be prepared to impose targeted sanctions on actors who subvert constitutional order while simultaneously protecting humanitarian channels and civilian services.
Second, Nigeria and other influential states in the sub region must exercise responsible leadership. Nigeria's own internal security challenges underscore a deeper truth. Ethnic and religious violence within a single state can have outsize consequences for the wider region. Recent nationwide emergency measures underscore the fragility of security in Africa's most populous country and the rapidity with which instability can spread across borders. Responsible stewardship by the region's largest economies and most populous democracies is a prerequisite for collective stability. They must act not as partisan actors but as guardians of the regional common good. Third, former and present leaders in the sub region should embrace a compact for peace. Men and women who once held power possess moral authority and access. They can mobilize dialogue and lend legitimacy to negotiated settlements. These elder statespersons must put their prestige at the service of reconciliation rather than of personal or partisan gain. When leaders convene in pursuit of peace they should prioritise the restoration of constitutional order and the protection of human rights. They should underscore the message that the ballot box is sacrosanct and that political contests must be resolved through institutions not arms.
To be concrete, here are the leaders of the West African states whose voices and actions matter today. They must be implored to use their offices to converge for peace. The presidents of the Ecowas member states include His Excellency Patrice Talon of Benin, His Excellency Ibrahim Traoré of Burkina Faso, His Excellency José Maria Neves of Cabo Verde, His Excellency Alassane Dramane Ouattara of Côte d'Ivoire, His Excellency Adama Barrow of The Gambia, His Excellency John Dramani Mahama of Ghana, His Excellency Mamady Doumbouya of Guinea, His Excellency General Horta N'Tam of Guinea Bissau, His Excellency Joseph Boakai of Liberia, His Excellency Assimi Goïta of Mali, His Excellency Abdourahamane Tchiani of Niger, His Excellency Bola Ahmed Tinubu of Nigeria, His Excellency Bassirou Diomaye Faye of Senegal, His Excellency Julius Maada Bio of Sierra Leone, and His Excellency Faure Gnassingbé of Togo. Each of these leaders holds an obligation that transcends national interest. The list of names is not an inventory. It is an appeal. The presence and moral clarity of these individuals can determine whether we bend toward peace or toward deeper fracture.
Finally, civil society, media, and faith leaders must reclaim the high ground. They are the custodians of public conscience. When they call for patience, truth, and reconciliation they build buffers against the contagion of violence. This is not a time for partisanship. It is a time for patriotism and for the courage to place the long term welfare of our peoples above short term political advantage.
If the world is unjust and if politics often rewards opportunism, that is no excuse to surrender to despair. The arc of history bends toward justice only when citizens insist upon it. Let this be the hour when the region chooses the rule of law over the rule of force. Let this be the hour when presidents convene to broker peace, when regional institutions act with unity and resolve, and when the martyrs of past struggles are honored by ensuring that their sacrifices were not in vain.
To the leaders of the United Nations, the African Union, Ecowas, and to those who lead our nations: do not allow history to record that we stood by while ballots were stolen and futures were broken. Act with urgency and with compassion. To the people across our sub region: demand accountability, insist upon fair process, and refuse the easy solace of hatred. Our prosperity and our children depend upon the choices we make now.
West Africa can still be a cradle of democratic excellence and a beacon of peaceful coexistence. But that future is contingent upon action today. If we fail to protect the sanctity of elections and the dignity of those who participate in them we will have betrayed not only our fellow citizens but the very ideals that justify governance. Let us choose to be the generation that defended democracy, protected the vulnerable, and reclaimed a future of shared prosperity.
By Muhammed Jallow
