ECOWAS Knew Nigeria’s 2023 Election Was Deeply Flawed, Yet Still Made Tinubu Chairman

Just days after Nigeria’s disputed February 2023 presidential election, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) issued a detailed preliminary statement cataloguing widespread irregularities. The mission documented late starts, delivery of wrong voting materials, polling station postponements, inadequate voter secrecy, BVAS failures, ballot snatching, violence, and killings across multiple states. Yet just four months later, on July 9, 2023, the same regional body unanimously elected Bola Tinubu as its chairman at the 63rd Ordinary Session in Bissau, Guinea-Bissau.

The ECOWAS observation mission, led by former Sierra Leonean President Ernest Bai Koroma, explicitly stated that the elections were not without serious problems. There were cases of BVAS failure to accredit voters due to technical issues. Most polling officials demonstrated inadequate knowledge of their duties. There were reported cases of ballot snatching and BVAS theft in states including Delta, Katsina and Anambra. Incidents of violence, killings and disruption were recorded in several states. The mission presented its sincere condolences to families of victims.

Despite this damning catalogue, ECOWAS did not call for the election to be annulled, did not demand a rerun, and did not question the legitimacy of the declared winner. Instead, the mission concluded that “the processes on election day unfolded in a generally peaceful environment” and that vote counting was “transparent, simple and professional”. This framing allowed the regional body to acknowledge serious problems while simultaneously accepting the outcome.

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The timeline is damning. ECOWAS observed the irregularities. ECOWAS documented the failures. ECOWAS knew the election was deeply flawed. Yet when it came time to choose a chairman for the region’s most powerful political body, the same leaders who had received reports of ballot snatching, BVAS theft and voter suppression still placed their votes for Tinubu.

The contrast could not be starker. While Tinubu was being celebrated as ECOWAS chairman, Nigerian courts were still hearing petitions challenging the very election that brought him to power. The Presidential Election Petition Court would later dismiss the EU and ECOWAS reports as “completely valueless and inadmissible” in Nigerian courts because their authors did not present themselves for cross-examination. But the question for ECOWAS is not about legal admissibility. It is about moral consistency. It is about whether an organisation that claims to defend democracy in West Africa should reward a leader whose election it had itself documented as deeply flawed.

ECOWAS leaders knew what they were doing when they elected Tinubu. They had the reports. They had the evidence. They chose to look the other way. And now, three years later, Nigerians are left to wonder: if the regional body that was supposed to be the guardian of West African democracy could not speak truth to power when it mattered most, what exactly is ECOWAS for?

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