The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) is facing a critical staffing vacuum following the formal withdrawal of Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger from the bloc in January 2025. At an extraordinary Council of Ministers meeting held in Abuja, regional leaders acknowledged the growing institutional strain and called for urgent reforms to recruitment processes and staff redistribution.
Ambassador Omar Touray, President of the ECOWAS Commission, opened the session by describing the meeting as “borne out of necessity.” He cited three major challenges: procedural delays in recruitment, an ageing workforce, and the loss of staff from the three departed member states. “In the last three years, we have managed to fill vacancies in our institutions using a staff regulation that, for a large part, constrains management’s ability to administratively expedite this process,” Touray said.
The Commission has relied on temporary fixes to fill roles, but Touray warned that the volume of applications now exceeds the capacity of existing recruitment firms. “We have had to recruit additional firms and sought your approval for these international independent firms,” he added. The manual nature of the recruitment process has further slowed progress, leaving ECOWAS institutions understaffed and overstretched.
The exit of Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger whose governments were taken over by military juntas has created a significant gap in personnel. Touray asked ministers to guide the equitable redistribution of these now-vacant positions among the remaining member states. “We need council to guide us in the equitable distribution of the vacant positions among all the member states without sacrificing competence,” he said.
Timothy Kabba, Sierra Leone’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and Chair of the Council of Ministers, stressed that the staffing crisis is not just administrative but political. “Our focus should not only be on the parameters of equitable distribution but also we should be particularly concerned about fairness and inclusivity,” Kabba said. He warned that delays in recruitment and gaps in representation could undermine ECOWAS’s credibility and legitimacy. “The recruitment issue is not merely administrative, but it touches on institutional credibility, regional integration, and political legitimacy.”
Kabba also drew attention to broader regional instability, noting a surge in extremist violence, food insecurity, and displacement. “We are witnessing a surge in terrorist and extremist violence, unprecedented in scale, intensity and sophistication,” he said, referencing the growing threat posed by groups such as Islamic State West Africa Province. He called for coordinated action to address these challenges, which he said are exacerbated by institutional weaknesses.
Nigeria’s Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Ambassador Bianca Odumegwu-Ojukwu, welcomed delegates and reaffirmed Nigeria’s commitment to ECOWAS. She acknowledged the urgency of the staffing crisis and the need to fill all existing vacancies. “This extraordinary session of the ECOWAS Council of Ministers is convened to deliberate on a matter of institutional importance—recruitment to fill the vacancies within the ECOWAS system, and the status of staff who are citizens of Burkina Faso, Niger and Mali, following the decision of these countries to withdraw from our communities,” she said.
Odumegwu-Ojukwu added that Nigeria would continue to support ECOWAS’s efforts to function effectively. “We fully recognise the importance of this exercise as an essential undertaking aimed at ensuring that all existing vacancies are duly filled.”
The withdrawal of the three Sahel countries followed accusations that ECOWAS had failed to support their counter-terrorism efforts. In a joint statement, the military governments of Ibrahim Traoré (Burkina Faso), Assimi Goita (Mali), and Abdourahamane Tiani (Niger) said the bloc had abandoned its foundational values. Their formal exit on 29 January 2025 has left ECOWAS scrambling to reassign staff roles and maintain operational capacity.
The Council of Ministers is now tasked with deciding how to redistribute the vacated positions, balance equity with technical merit, and possibly amend staff regulations to allow faster recruitment. Touray urged the Council to adopt a strategy that maintains competence while ensuring fair representation across member states.
Operationally, ECOWAS faces a bottleneck in its recruitment pipeline. The manual processing of applications is slow, and the ageing workforce requires succession planning. The Commission’s request for guidance signals a push for both short-term outsourcing and long-term regulatory reform.
