ECOWAS scraps checkpoints, residency permits

West African leaders decided on Tuesday to dismantle immediately all checkpoints on their international highways, and adopt other far-reaching measures aimed at ensuring greater social and economic integration among the 16 countries that make up the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). The ECOWAS secretariat told IRIN today that the leaders agreed at their daylong mini-summit that ended on Tuesday in Abuja, Nigeria, that mandatory residency permits were to be abolished. The measure is aimed at creating a borderless ECOWAS region whose highways have multiple checkpoints, many of which were illegal, that limit the free movement of people. Nigeria has already dismantled those in its territory. Other measures adopted by the summit included the elimination of rigid border formalities and the use of modern passport-scanning machines. Ranking immigration officials, many of whom attended the meeting with customs officers, have been told to accord the maximum 90-day period of stay to ECOWAS citizens by 15 April. Border posts are to be manned only by essential workers such as customs and immigration agents. Joint border patrols will be carried out by the police forces of Benin, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Mali, Niger, Nigeria and Togo. The internal security agencies of these countries are also to collaborate more closely in sharing information, staff exchange and the holding of training courses and meetings. An ECOWAS official told IRIN that these countries were those that had “decided to take the fast-track approach to integration” in the subregion. An ECOWAS passport for the subregion has been agreed to and details of its contents are being worked out. On infrastructure, the leaders decided to modernise and link up railways from Lagos through Cotonou (Benin) to Lome (Togo) and Accra (Ghana). A similar link from Lagos, Niamey (Niger) and Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso) is being considered.