Vice President Yemi Osinbajo has said that ECOWAS would not accept any means of changing government other than through democratic election.
He said, “as far as ECOWAS is concerned, there is only one way of changing government in the region, acceptable to all of the protocols, to even the political rights of the people and that is by a democratically elected government.”
Vice President Osinbajo said this after attending the ECOWAS Extraordinary Summit on the political situations in Burkina Faso, Mali and Guinea in Accra today.
Osinbajo who represented President Muhammadu Buhari at the Summit was accosted by reporters (at the end of the meeting) who wanted to know how the summit of the leaders fared.
Responding, the VP said “I think it has been fruitful, the Heads of State again reiterated the firm position that had been taken earlier that there is absolutely no excuse for a change of government by coup d’etat.
“So, what happened in Burkina Faso was considered and has been condemned by all of the heads of state and we do not think there is any excuse for it whatsoever.
“But at the moment, of course, engagement is going on with the military junta and also we condemned the attempted coup in Guinea-Bissau and congratulated President Embalo and the people of Guinea-Bissau for resisting that unconstitutional attempt to change the government.
“All in all it has been fruitful and we are very hopeful that lessons had been learnt and we will not see a repeat of this.
Asked about Mali, the Vice President said “we are expecting that the Malian authorities would respond to ECOWAS imposed sanctions as you know and we expect that at some point, the Malian authorities themselves would begin to speed up the process of transition. We expect that they would do so. We are looking forward to that engagement.”
A statement by the Vice President’s aide, Laolu Akande said the Vice President has since returned to Abuja from his assignment in Accra.
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