Gender Balance: ECOWAS Parliament Set To Elect First Female Speaker

The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Parliament will elect its first female speaker.

Togo’s ECOWAS Parliamentarians have already arrived at the location where the 2024 Extraordinary Session of the Sixth Legislature of the Community Parliament is being held.

The Togo delegation is expected to be sworn in on Thursday, and the new Speaker will be chosen from among them, as the position has been allotted based on the parliament’s rotational system.

Statements emerging from the floor of the Parliament revealed that a female parliamentarian, Memounatou Ibrahima, will emerge as the speaker.

Ibrahima served as the third Deputy Speaker of the ECOWAS Parliament’s fifth Legislature, and she has been a member since 2021.

She is poised to take up the baton from the Nigerian leader of delegation, Senator Barau Jubrin, who was elected the First Deputy Speaker at the inauguration of the Sixth Legislature of the ECOWAS Parliament on April 4th 2024, had to act as the Speaker to avoid creating a leadership vacuum at the Community Parliament.

The Republic of Togo delegation was not present at the inauguration of the Sixth ECOWAS Legislature on April 4th, 2024, because the country had not held elections to send representatives to the Community Parliament.