ECOWAS the non-venomous viper

To understand the power wielded by ECOWAS, its foundation should be considered.
ECOWAS was founded on May 28, 1975, with the signing of the Treaty of Lagos, and its mission was primarily to promote economic integration across the region of West Africa and build up support across several member countries.

ECOWAS is considered one of the pillars of the African economic community, and it has helped to achieve relative “collective self-sufficiency” for its member states by creating a single large trading bloc through an economic and trading union. However apart from its economic function, ECOWAS has also take on another function which is inevitably
tied to its economic function, that of being a
peacekeeping force in the region.

As part of its peacekeeping job, the ECOWAS court was created. Known as the ECOWAS Community Court of Justice, it was created by a protocol signed in 1991
and was later included in Article 6 of the Revised Treaty of the Community in 1993.
The court officially began operations in 1991 and its protocol came into effect on 5 November 1996. It provides the ECOWAS Council with advisory opinions on legal issues (Article 10). Apart from that, like its companion courts the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) and East African Court of Justice, it has jurisdiction to rule on fundamental human rights breaches.

Despite the huge transnational duty the Leviathan (ECOWAS) has to play,  one constant character of infidelity and chronic disregard of directives can be repeatedly seen by member states either while this directive is handed by the council of presidents or by the ECOWAS court of Justice. 

These ranges from the blatant disregard of the Nigerian President in the Nnamdi Kanu case to the current successfully averted crisis in the Gambia. 

I asked Mr Jerry Ukaigwe a notable jurist in ECOWAS law what he feels about the disregard of ECOWAS directives and here is his views. 

ECOWAS may be modelled on EU  but they are not on the same wavelength. UN, EU and ECOWAS ply on the same or similar route in terms of the character of their legal framework- Treaties. UN may have security council that can authorise territorial encroachment, may be on human right/ humanitarian grounds. Some  of the laws relied upon may be customary  international law, which most countries consider-somehow-to be part of their laws-This class excludes treaties, in respect of which a non-party state can not be bound. Again, UN can also use non-legal strategies to enforce its decisions, e.g. sanctions and political ostracism(pariah- state). Because of the effect these may have on a country, the affected state would like to comply with UN. EU is somewhat unique because of the doctrine of supranationality, in that EU has power to ferry its laws down to the territories of members. So EU laws are laws of the members, therefore compliance is inevitable. ECOWAS lack these factors. It has no supranational powers over its members, it cant effectively use economic sanctions because the members trade often with foreign countries so they have nothing to lose in case  sanction is imposed by ECOWAS.