ABUJA, Nigeria: The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Parliament ordered an investigation on Tuesday, May 5, 2026, into recent terrorist attacks in West Africa and xenophobic violence against African migrants in South Africa.
Okay News reports that Alexander Afenyo-Markin, a Member of Parliament from Ghana and the regional parliament’s third deputy speaker, moved a motion directing the Committee on Political Affairs to investigate the incidents.
Afenyo-Markin cited a February 14, 2026, terrorist attack in northern Burkina Faso where militants affiliated with Al-Qaeda killed 18 Ghanaian tomato traders. “A regional community that cannot protect its own citizens in transit has not yet earned its name,” Afenyo-Markin said.
He stated that the militants separated the victims by gender prior to the executions. “The attackers separated the men from the women before executing them and setting the vehicle ablaze with the driver still inside,” Afenyo-Markin said. “These were not statistics. They were breadwinners, fathers and sons, the quiet engines of the regional supply chain that feeds our markets,” he said.
The motion referenced an April 25, 2026, attack in Mali that resulted in the death of the country’s Minister of Defence, Gen. Sadio Camara. Afenyo-Markin noted this incident severed the trade route between Ghana and Mali, and that Ghana’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated it could no longer guarantee the safety of travelers on that corridor.
Afenyo-Markin criticized the failure to enforce the Free Movement Protocol, adopted by ECOWAS in 1979, stating that citizens experience border harassment due to conflicts between national policies and regional agreements. “The daily reality of our citizens contradicts the promise at every turn,” he said.
The parliamentarian detailed xenophobic attacks in the South African regions of KwaZulu-Natal, Cape Town, and Pretoria, where citizens of Ghana, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, and Ethiopia were killed, displaced, or subjected to property theft. Afenyo-Markin addressed remarks made by South African President Cyril Ramaphosa on Freedom Day regarding the violence. “Words delivered from a ceremonial platform do not arrest a single perpetrator,” Afenyo-Markin said.
“The safety of our people must never be a matter open to devastation,” he said. Afenyo-Markin requested a formal communication be directed to the Parliament of South Africa and the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights.
