FROM Day One, the Economic Community of West African States, ECOWAS, committed a great blunder by its decision to announce a military adventure purportedly to flush out the junta of Niger Republic led by General Abdourahmane Omar Tchiani.

A newly-installed president of Nigeria who a few weeks later was elected Chairman of ECOWAS Authority of Heads of State and Government should have settled down and assessed the challenge of the military intervention in Niger before agreeing to an educated response to the rising incidence of military interventions in the region.

The issuing of a seven-day ultimatum for the junta to return power to deposed Mohamed Bazoum or face possible military action was an impulse that did not first factor in Nigeria’s or even the region’s overall interests.

The consequence is that Nigeria has been forced by realities jumping her in the face to make an embarrassing about-face and become the chief advocate of dialogue. We acted before thinking. That is not good enough a way to proceed on a course of action that could lead to unforeseeable disastrous outcomes.

As a sovereign country, before we engage in any military action with external adversaries, especially our immediate neighbours, we must put the national interests of Nigeria first. The personal egos or fancies of our leaders and their foreign backers must be put at the back burner. Those foreign backers, especially the world powers of Europe, America and Asia, are pushing us spurred by their national interests, which many times go against ours.

Our national interests involved are many. Niger Republic is like a cousin to Nigeria. If our border security or any other form of security in the North is to succeed, we must work with Niger. Nigeria is a huge market for agricultural goods of Niger, especially livestock and other foodstuffs. When the sanctions we placed on Niger bite them hard, it will bite Nigerians. Their refugees will flood our country, and some of them will be jihadists under foreign pay to destabilise Nigeria.

We call on President Tinubu to lead ECOWAS to further de-escalate tension with the junta after cooling off on military intervention. We should restore their power supply and reopen the borders. That way, the dialogue will become a discussion between brothers or friends, not adversaries. You can’t tie up a person and “dialogue” with him.

We must encourage the junta to make their stay short and hand over to an elected government that the people of Niger want. Bazoum’s regime is discredited and gone. Without true democracy and good governance in the region, ECOWAS cannot stop military coups.

We must come back home and face our problems which are many. We need our military resources to face our own insecurity. We cannot be chasing rats outside while fire is gutting our home.