In Summary:
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Moima Briggs Mensah claimed that for the ‘first-time’, the ECOWAS parliament has a female speaker
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We have fact-checked the claim by reviewing credible and authoritative sources including the ECOWAS website
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We found the statement to be correct.
On June 19, Bong County District #5 Representative Moima Briggs Mensah appeared on the OK Morning Rush and made claimed that for the first time ECOWAS has a female as speaker of the parliament.
Representative Mensah made this claim while discussing the structure of the parliament and her role as a member of the Liberian delegation and a subcommittee at the parliament.
Claim
Said Rep. Briggs-Mensah, “For the first time, ECOWAS has a female as Speaker who is from Togo because it is the time of Togo now.”
Article 24b of the Supplementary Act of the Parliament provides that the position of the Speaker of the Parliament shall be allocated to Member States by the Authority of the Heads of State, in line with an established rotational system based on the alphabetical order of States.
And with the last speaker being from Sierra Leone, it was now time for Togo to occupy the speakership position of the parliament.
Rating Justification
To verify this claim, we searched and found many publications on the election of the Hon. Memounatou Ibrahima of Togo as speaker of the ECOWAS Parliament on May 23, 2024 in Nigeria.
A publication found on the ECOWAS parliament website states that Speaker Ibrahima election means that this is the first time that a female has held the post since the establishment of the first legislature of Parliament in 2000.
Also, many media organizations published articles on the election of Madam Ibrahima, stating that this is the first time a female has been elected to the position. These publications can be seen here, here, and here.
Conclusion
Based on this, we conclude that Representative Moima Briggs Mensah’s claim that “for the first time” the ECOWAS parliament has a female speaker is correct.
Publications found on the ECOWAS parliament website and other news agencies state that the current speaker of the parliament is the first female to hold the post since 2000.
