The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) will continue to support Burkina Faso despite concerns about the ruling military junta’s plan to hold power for a three-year transition period after a January coup, a representative of the West African bloc confirmed, reported CGTN Africa.
“The issues and the problems that plague Burkina Faso are our problems as well,” Ghana’s Foreign Minister Shirley Ayorkor Botchway said. “It is not in this time of need of Burkina Faso that ECOWAS will abandon it.”
Botchway led the ECOWAS delegation that met Burkina Faso coup leader and interim President Paul-Henri Damiba in the capital Ouagadougou. She said the West African regional bloc was nevertheless concerned about the three-year period for transition back to democracy but that the ruling junta had explained their reasons behind the given period before democratic elections are held in the Sahel country.
Notably, ECOWAS had suspended Burkina Faso after the military overthrew President Roch Kabore on January 24. Kabore was slammed for his ineffectiveness to control mounting jihadist violence that continues to plague the country. Last month, coup leader Damiba was declared as the president of the West African nation.
The ECOWAS, however, did not impose sanctions on Burkina Faso as it did on neighboring Mali and Guinea, where military takeovers took place in August 2020 and September 2021, respectively.
The West African bloc continues to demand the release of former President Kabore, who has been in custody for nearly two months since the coup.
Botchway said the delegation had been granted permission to visit the former leader and he was found to be in good spirits.
Burkina Faso, alongside neighbors Mali and Niger, has been struggling to combat attacks by groups linked to al-Qaeda and the ISIL (ISIS) armed groups who have killed thousands of people and displaced hundreds of thousands in the West Africa Sahel area, capturing swaths of territories.
