Some members of tourism federation delegates from the Economic Community of West African States [ECOWAS] made up of representatives from Ghana, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, and Guinea-Bissau were on Saturday 27th of March night held hostage in Burkina Faso during a meeting in the country’s capital Ouagadougou.
A member of the delegation from Nigeria, Precious Okonji, who represented the Federation of Tourism Associations of Nigeria [FTAN], umbrella private sector body said their captors were forcing them to sign a newly drafted constitution for the proposed ECOWAS Tourism Confederation, a private sub-sector body that was earlier facilitated by the Economic Community of West African States [ECOWAS] tourism department that is incidentally headed by a native of Burkina Faso which they could not interpret because it was in French.
According to Okonji, he said they believed the owner of the Pacific Hotel in Ouagadougou where they were held and the former chairman of the Ad-hoc committee, Pierre Zungrana, who was also a representative for Burkina Faso, instructed security at the hotel to lock them until they signed to accept the new constitution.
He told African Travel Times that embassy staff whose delegates were held hostage apart from Nigeria because he could not get across to the Nigerian Embassy in that country as the number on the website was not answered stormed the hotel to demand the release of their citizens but was fiercely resisted by the representatives from the francophone countries, insisting that the Chairperson of the meeting from Ghana sign the document.
Okonji however said that an official from the Nigerian Embassy in Burkina Faso reached out to him whilst he was already in Lome, Togo on his way back home by the following Monday since the incident happened on a Saturday night to find out if he was still in the country and apologised.
The representatives from 12 ECOWAS States out of 16 were in attendance, leaving out Liberia, Cape Verde, Mauritania, and The Gambia whose officials did not receive invitations to attend.
The signing of the constitution was resisted by the Anglophone countries and the current interim Chairman of the Ad-hoc Committee, from Ghana, who had assumed the interim position, to oversee the adoption of a constitution and election of executives.
Representatives from the Anglophone countries indicate the resistance to the adoption of the constitution was due to their inability to comprehend its contents, and unresolved issues pertaining to proposed legal frameworks.
The election of executives was also resisted because, according to sources, only 9 out of the 12 member states were present, whereas at least 10, representing two-thirds of the body were needed for an election to hold.
Reports say four other countries had left due to the chaotic scenes during the meeting.
The representatives who were held hostage for 9 hours were eventually rescued by the police after the Burkinabe team that footed the cost of the delegates’ return tickets and accommodation insisted that they be refunded which was done by the delegate from Sierra Leone on behalf of others.
Meanwhile, all efforts to reach the ECOWAS Tourism Principal Officer, Stella Drabo who is a native of Burkina Faso that initiated the proposed West Africa Tourism Federation and facilitated the first meeting in Burkina -Faso last December 2020 could not be reached as at the time of filing this report.
By Afolami Ayodele Lawrence [Lagos]
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