At a time when the EU is putting enormous pressure on the ACP countries to sign an Economic Partnership Agreement before the end of the year, brandishing threats of withdrawal of development aid and  increasing customs duties on imports, this press report is most welcome. We never cease to reiterate, in these columns, that it is no good putting the cart before the horse. How could one sign a partnership agreement between the ECOWAS (the Economic Community of West African States) and the European Union, when the regional integration of West Africa is not yet a reality.

Monday, September 3, 2007

The Informal Network of Journalists (in French RIJ), set out on a ten day journey from August 16 to 26, in co-operation with the German development agency DED and with financial support from the mobile phone company TELMOB. The trip was an exchange visit among colleagues and also an opportunity for some tourism in the sub-region.

Our journey took us to Benin (Cotonou and Ouidah), Togo (Lomé) and Ghana (Accra, Kumassi).  All along we were confronted with police harassment.

One purpose of the  RIJ trip was to see evidence, on sight, of the obstruction that takes place at border police stations and at the same time to investigate the level of integration among the Community’s populations – a wish dear to the hearts of the ECOWAS and the WAEMOU, the West African Economic and Monetary Union.

Therefore the ten members of the delegation did not carry passports,  but were asked to bring an ECOWAS transit document, a requirement fulfilled by all. We started out at 7 a.m. on August 16, heading for Cotonou on board a TSR bus of a public transport company. Like all well behaved passengers we took our seats and settled down, going east to Fada N’Gourma, Pama and then Nadiagou, the last village in Burkina before the border with Benin. There we had the only police border control on the Burkinese side.

After the usual clearance procedures (no problems for the passengers), we could take our seats again and continued for Porga in Benin, a suburb where a special police check-point and  a customs office have been set up. And here we ran right into it, head on! The bus drivers, in order to avoid long discussions with police officers, ask each individual passenger to contribute 500 CFA francs, except those carrying a Mission Order. Even those, however, have to come up with solid reasons for travelling, besides producing their papers (“police not feed on paper”, as they like to point out). If not, they may be kept waiting endlessly.

“Police not care about papers”, they declare.

From Porga to Cotonou, passenger buses were continuously raided by one racket after the other of local policemen, military police and customs officers. Don’t even bother to ask them to read your documents, just slip a 1000 CFA note in with the bus/car papers and you will be allowed to travel on in peace and quiet. If not, whistles will be blown (the police excel in this) and in the end it will become truly irritating. Even at the very city centre of Abomey-Calavi the sharp polices whistles were heard into the night, just to extract 500 or 1000 CFA francs from a traveller. In Cotonou, do not ever fancy parking your car off limits, you will be paying for it : 200 – 500 CFA francs.

After four days in Cotonou, we decided to go on to Lomé in Togo, this time in a mini-bus.  The road to Lomé runs along the Atlantic coast  with a nice view over the sea. We thus had an opportunity to see various villages of water-dwellers, their houses built on piles out in the sea: Ahémé  in Benin and Aného in Togo. Going from one country to the other one has absolutely no impression of crossing borders, so much the landscape remains the same. The big problem of Benin, however, is the fact the police are all bent on hanging on to their racketeering. We experienced this once again in Hilla Condji at the border between Benin and Togo.

Here, besides the customs office, there are two police posts 100 m from one another plus an immigration office on the Togolese side. All passengers have to walk the distance between the two. Along these 100 metres there are two more police checks travellers must pass, one by one. This is where the racket has its field day.

On both sides of the border, if you do not have a Beninese or Togolese-sounding name, you will have to come up with 300 – 500 CFA francs, regardless of your documents (ECOWAS transit card, passport or mission order). At this border crossing the police do not care a rap about the free circulation of people and goods, which the ECOWAS and WAEMOU authorities are advocating. On the other hand, at the border between Togo and Ghana things went smoothly and we did not have much difficulty. Especially as the Togolese police realised that we were a group of journalists

However, two hours waiting time to get documents stamped.

From Aflao (on the border between Togo and Ghana) to Accra, the Ghanaian police were also part of the game. The racket mainly concentrates on small and medium size buses. Passengers travelling with the national transport company, STC, are most of the time left in peace, because of the high regard that company enjoys. But on Wednesday the 22nd of August, as we had boarded an STC bus leaving for Accra, the driver was called to attention by the strident whistle from a small police van on patrol.

Clearly accustomed to this, the driver continued his route. But a quarter of an hour later, the van drives up alongside the bus and the driver is summoned to pull up at the roadside. There was a lengthy explanation between driver and police. In order to calm their fury and to avoid the risk of having his bus blocked, the driver had  to unlock  his purse and hand over some cédis (Ghanaian currency) to the police.

We then came into Accra and Kumassi, the third and last leg on our journey. After this stop-over in the homeland of Kwamé N’Krumah and the Ashanti people, we decided to return home. At the border stops in Paga (Ghana) and Dakola (Burkina Faso) we once more had to suffer martyrdom. It took over two hours to have our documents stamped and returned. One fails to understand.

This was especially frustrating since our luggage, this time, did not have to undergo customs clearance. Finally back home after such an experience, we were having some serious questions about the free circulation of people and goods. The revised WAEMOU treaty states in its preamble that Member States, in pursuance of the objectives of the ECOWAS, agree to set up between them a common market, based on the following: free circulation of people, goods, services and capital and the right of self-employed and salaried persons to work in these states, a common external customs tariff and a common trade policy; subsequently co-ordination of national practices across various sectors of the economy, joint actions and, possibly, a common policy for human resources, transport, etc. 

Why is it that some countries do all in their power to implement the treaty and others not? A citizen of Burkina Faso is at pains to understand why police barriers and all that goes with it are being abolished  in the home country and not elsewhere. The story of the reaction of a Ghanaian policeman tells a lot about the gap between official speeches and actual facts. To a passenger who wanted to cross the border waving his ECOWAS travel card, the policeman burst out: “ECOWAS, ECOWAS! Your talk of ECOWAS, that is for the telly. We don’t have any telly here. Give money!”

Ismaël BICABA

SIDWAYA (daily paper) September 3, 2007.

Article published under the heading: Police harassment within the ECOWAS: A fact of daily life, in spite of official statements.