Abuja — The Chairman of the Authority of Heads of State and Government of ECOWAS and President of Nigeria, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, has warned that the region will never allow unconstitutional ascension to power and will continue to work with the international community in entrenching democratic principles and good governance in the region.

Speaking as Special Guest of Honour at the inauguration of the Third Legislature of the ECOWAS Parliament in Abuja on Thursday, 11th August 2011, the President condemned the recent coup attempt in Niger, and reiterated the region's stance on the consolidation of stability in a region that was wracked by political crises in the 90s.Zero tolerance for ascension to power through unconstitutional means is one of the elements of the constitutional convergence principles enunciated in the 2001 ECOWAS Supplementary Protocol on Democracy and Good Governance signed by Heads of State and Government toward institutionalizing the culture of democracy in the region. The ECOWAS Chairman urged West Africans to buy into the integration process and charged the Parliament to serve as the bridge between the various ECOWAS programmes and the people who are the beneficiaries of such programmes.

He also expressed the hope that future Members of the Community Parliament would be elected through direct universal suffrage instead of the current practice of the members emerging from national legislatures. In his address of welcome, the President of the ECOWAS Commission, Ambassador James Victor Gbeho, reminded the parliamentarians that they were beginning their work in the 37th year of ECOWAS' existence, during which the Community institutions were undergoing deep structural transformations both in form and strategy, to respond to the challenges of the times.