Fresh reports reaching the desk of Africa Daily News, New York have shown that the ECOWAS Court of Justice has decried the poor application of community law by the national courts of member states.
The court stated that this impacts negatively on the growth of the law and the region’s integration project.
“In twenty years of operation, the Court has never been seized of a referral by a national court”, said Vice President Justice Gberi-be Ouatttara.
Ouatttara spoke at the opening of the first ordinary session of the 2022 ECOWAS Parliament.
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Parliamentarians will consider various reports, hold an interactive session with the regional civil society and consider the report of the ECOWAS Commission President on the implementation of the Community work programme.
Justice Ouattara represented the Court President Justice Edward Amoako Asante at the ceremony.
He blamed the bad law application on the poor knowledge of the court despite its enviable jurisprudence, sensitization campaigns and external court sessions.
The judge expressed concern about the absence of nationally designated focal points for the execution of the court’s decisions in many member states.
Quattara charged West African countries to domesticate legal instruments, particularly the Revised Treaty and the Protocols of the Court.
The judge further lamented that states were taking too long to trigger the procedure for the domestication of the instruments and urged them to make amends.
A coalition of anti-corruption organisations has formed a group to promote whistleblowing as a strategy for fighting corruption and attaining transparency and good governance in ECOWAS member states.
The Whistleblowing Advocacy Coalition of West Africa (WACOWA) said the group was formed following talks with the ECOWAS Commission and the Network of Anti-corruption Institutions in West Africa (NACIWA) on strengthening the fight against corruption in West Africa.
The coalition made up of 13 civil society organisations disclosed this in a statement signed by Chido Onumah of the African Centre for Media and Information Literacy (AFRICMIL).
