ECOWAS will not tolerate coup in Africa again – Osinbajo

Nigerian Vice President Yemi Osinbajo said that no excuse justifies a change of government by coup d’etat.

This is as he said as far as the Economic Community of West African States is concerned, there is only one way of changing government in the region, acceptable to all of the protocols, to even the political rights of the people and that is by a democratically elected government.

Osinbajo spoke to reporters on Thursday after attending the ECOWAS Extraordinary Summit on the political situations in Burkina Faso, Mali and Guinea in Accra.

Senior Special Assistant to the Vice President on Media and Publicity, Laolu Akande, disclosed this in a statement he signed late Thursday titled ‘Democratic election only acceptable way to change the government, Osinbajo says after ECOWAS summit in Ghana’.

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Osinbajo who represented President Muhammadu Buhari at the Summit said “I think it has been fruitful, the Heads of State again reiterated the firm position that had been taken earlier that there is absolutely no excuse for a change of government by coup d’etat.

“So, what happened in Burkina Faso was considered and has been condemned by all of the heads of state and we do not think there is any excuse for it whatsoever.

“But at the moment, of course, engagement is going on with the military junta and also we condemned the attempted coup in Guinea-Bissau and congratulated President Embalo and the people of Guinea-Bissau for resisting that unconstitutional attempt to change the government.

“All in all it has been fruitful and we are very hopeful that lessons have been learnt and we will not see a repeat of this. What about Mali?”

The Vice President added that “We are expecting that the Malian authorities would respond to ECOWAS imposed sanctions as you know and we expect that at some point, the Malian authorities themselves would begin to speed up the process of transition. We expect that they would do so. We are looking forward to that engagement.”

He has since returned to Abuja on Thursday evening, from Accra.