Abstract
Economic Community of West African (ECOWAS) is a regional group of fifteen West African countries founded in 1975 with the objectiveof promoting economic integration in all fields of economic activity, particularly industry, transport, telecommunications, energy, agriculture, natural resources, commerce, monetary and financial questions, social and cultural matters among others.To facilitate the actualization of these objectives, several protocols including the protocol on free movement of people were adopted. However, about four decades of free movement protocol, less was reported to have been achieved of its major objective. One of the bottlenecks largely coined in extant literatures was the existence of multiple and unviable checkpoints within most of the Member States a phenomenon that was believed toostracized the realization of the whole objectives. Although, the number and composition of checkpoints varies from one country to the other, it was estimated that checkpoints in West Africa are placed in a radius of 10km drives. This behaviour is nevertheless alarming and has since sabotagedthe smooth movement of people within the sub region. This study examined the consequences of the existence of multiple checkpoints on ECOWAS free movement protocol and how it has impeded its success as an economic union over the years.
