It’s the West African equivalent of the EEC, the precursor to the EU. It’s a thoroughly neoliberal institution staffed at the highest levels almost exclusively by people who are there to do the West’s bidding either because they have been bought off or because they are “true believers” (just look up the backgrounds of who the people in charge are, they tend to be dyed in the wool liberals educated in western universities or trained by western NGOs). It functions as a vehicle through which the West can control the region’s economic policies. Every time a country in the region tries to assert its independence from the Anglo-European neo-colonial system they immediately get condemned by the ECOWAS and have their membership suspended, from Mali to Guinea and Burkina Faso, and now Niger. Usually they only apply sanctions but sometimes military intervention is thereatened too since the organization has grown to have basically its own army. They are big on upholding “liberal democracy” through which the imperialists can exert maximum control since they usually fund both the ruling party and the opposition and can decide the outcome of elections whichever way suits them because they have so much influence through media and election financing. Nigeria is the leading state in ECOWAS and their current president is notoriously one of the biggest stooges of the US in all of Africa.