African Countries Need More Effective Measures To Discourage Coups, Says Osinbajo

Osinbajo stated this on Sunday during a bilateral meeting with Tanzanian Vice-President Philip Mpango, in Arusha.

According to a statement issued by Laolu Akande, Osinbajo’s spokesperson, the two leaders discussed a wide range of issues of interest to both Nigeria and Tanzania, including infrastructure development, trade and investment, technology, climate change and democracy.

Speaking about the need to promote democratic governance on the continent against the backdrop of recent coups in West Africa, Osinbajo emphasised the need for other regional bodies on the continent and others in the global community to support actions already taken by ECOWAS leaders.

“We in ECOWAS have experienced in just under a year, 4 coups d’etats including attempts and it is disturbing because we felt we had put those things behind us, and now they seem to be coming back,” he was quoted as saying.

“It is something that we think has to do with more cooperation. AU has been very forthcoming (in condemnation) in saying that we cannot tolerate unconstitutional seizures of power. But sanctioning these coupists without any proper ‘teeth’ has not been particularly effective.

“There might be a need for us to reach out to some of the regional bodies, development financial institutions such as the World Bank, IMF, and the EU.

“The EU has been quite responsive but we think that we can do a lot more just in terms of cooperation, so there is an effective deterrent if everyone agrees that undemocratic change of government is unacceptable.”