West African leaders at their 67th Ordinary Summit in Abuja on Sunday, 22 June 2025, chose Sierra Leone’s President Julius Maada Bio as the new rotational Chairman of the ECOWAS Authority of Heads of State and Government for the next one year.
He succeds Nigeria’s President Bola Tinubu who served for two terms from 2023.
A retired army Brigadier, Bio, 61, ruled Sierra Leone as military head of state from January to March 1996.
As a civilian politician, he won the presidential election 2018 and was re-elected in a bitterly contested vote in 2023.
The post-election tensions involving two military coup attempts reported by the government are lingering, with Bio’s immediate predecessor Bai Koroma exiled to Nigeria.
Tinubu inherited an ECOWAS afflicted by a resurgence of military incursions in regional politics. Four of ECOWAS’ 15 member States are now ruled by military juntas.
Three of the military rulers have formed the Alliance of Sahel States, AES and pulled their countries – Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger out of ECOWAS.
ECOWAS is 50 this year and negotiations under Tinubu’s leadership to bring back the breakaway countries have so far failed.
This was after an unpopular decision by the regional bloc to use military force to restore contitutional order in Niger after a military coup, which the organisation failed to follow through.##
