Building a Pro-Regional Coalition in Nigeria

ECOWAS has underperformed in its trade integration and crisis response mandates. Nigeria has to step up its game in improving effective regional cooperation in West Africa. To accomplish this, a strong pro-regional coalition and ideology need to be formed in the country.

Written by Abel B. S. Gaiya

May 25, 2025

Photo illustration by Dami Mojid / THE REPUBLIC. Source Ref: AfDB / FLICKR.

In a few essays published in The Republic and Developing Economics, I have made the argument that West Africa has undergone a ‘malformation’. The region was the site of some of the most prominent empires in precolonial sub-Saharan Africa (Ghana, Mali, Songhai and Sokoto) and the host of nineteenth-century polities envisioned by pan-Africanists to lead the African people to global ascendancy (Sierra Leone, Liberia, Lagos and the Gold Coast). In contrast, the region underperforms today, relative to its potential, relative to other African regions, and relative to the expectations of the generation of African independence leaders. This, I believe, is one of the reasons for the failure of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) in fostering trade integration and in preventing or effectively addressing many of the region’s crises.

Many scholars are tired of the numerous African intergovernmental institutions that are either dormant, merely exist for forum shopping or fail to achieve their primary mandates. While Africa has the second highest number of intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) after Europe, it also has the second highest number of IGOs that died (through expiry, dissolution, succession, merger or inactivity). Ken Opalo, an associate professor of Political Science at Georgetown University, has argued that a major reason for such failures is that the consensus-driven model of pan-Africanism held on the continent is one which privileges equal influence over effectiveness. Regional blocs such as ECOWAS can only improve if we allow that ‘states that step up to the plate are able to reap the benefits of bankrolling regional cooperation by acquiring agenda-setting powers and gaining more influence on continental affairs.’

Within the ECOWAS region, Nigeria is the most apparent hegemonic contender, as it has the region’s largest economy, largest population and biggest military. As the country has the largest central government budget in the region, it contributes more than 75 per cent of the human and financial resources of ECOWAS, which is more than the contributions of 13 other member states combined. However, while Nigeria was instrumental in the formation of ECOWAS, securing regional support for Nigeria’s hegemony requires that the country also improve the intensity and scope of its pro-regional impulses.

Transforming ECOWAS requires not only a willing (and able) regional hegemon to put in place the capital, economic resources and military capabilities required to drive regional cooperation. As the Marxist theorist, Antonio Gramsci, elaborated, the ideological dimension of hegemony is just as important. One could argue that ideological hegemony is even more important when the productive forces (e.g. formal trade, foreign direct investment, etc.) for regional integration are absent and need to be driven by political and ideological exertions that the notion of malformation can provide.

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About the Author

Abel B. S. Gaiya

is the chief research officer at Clean Technology Hub and holds an MSc in Development Economics.

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Building a Pro-Regional Coalition in Nigeria