The Economic Community of West Africa, ECOWAS Parliament’s newly elected Speaker, Memounatou Ibrahima, has vowed to restore the dignity of Parliamentarians, stressing that the community would be known for ethical standards and practices.
Memounatou pledged during her inaugural speech at the 2024 Second Extraordinary Session of the Sixth Legislature held in Kano, North West Nigeria.
She advocates the need to imbibe good conduct within the parliament to foster dedication, unity, and peace for the betterment of the people in the sub-region.
The first challenge is to continue improving our Parliament’s image and functioning to make it a respected and admired institution. Indeed, we must succeed in inspiring respect, consideration, and admiration through our individual and collective dedication, and the quality and relevance of our work and resolutions. With this in mind, we will be considering the possibility of putting together and implementing a code of ethics and good conduct within the Parliament, because our people want to be proud of their parliament, whose members must demonstrate diligence, efficiency, objectivity, and accountability.
The first female speaker of the Parliament also pledged her unwavering commitment to strengthen ties with national parliaments, to enable the implementation of projects and programmes across member states.
To achieve this, we intend to organize rotational activities, bringing together Members of the ECOWAS Parliament and those of national parliaments.
We will also emphasize the effective fulfillment of our twofold parliamentary mission, namely our right to propose amendments and to oversee the actions of Community institutions and agencies. In the same vein, the Sixth Legislature will strive, by the provisions of our Rule of Procedure, to be highly creative. It will aim for concrete results by giving priority to sessions dedicated to oral and written questions on the major concerns of our populations.
Additionally, Ibrahima emphasizes the need to initiate programs that will upskill women and the youth to tackle radicalization among young people, and illegal migration, while ensuring that the Parliament is visible to the local population.
According to her, this will enable the realization of the peaceful coexistence the world and the region crave.
I am delighted that significant progress has already been made in the area of inter-parliamentary cooperation.
The participation of several heads of regional and international institutions and diplomatic representations at our sessions is evidence of this.
This confirms our strong partnership and effective solidarity in the face of the many challenges facing the region and the world.
The Togolese elected speaker of the ECOWAS Parliament, is in line with the Supplementary Act on Enhancement of Powers of the Community Parliament, based on the provision of the alphabetical rotational speakership of the regional legislative body, as her predecessor was Sidie Mohamed Tunis from Sierra Leone.