Headquarters of the Economic Community of West African States, established by the 1975 Treaty of Lagos under General Yakubu Gowon. The Commission building on Asokoro is the institutional centre of Nigerian regional leadership.
ECOWAS was founded on 28 May 1975 by the Treaty of Lagos, signed at the State House under General Yakubu Gowon. Fifteen West African states are members. From inception, Nigeria has been the dominant contributor — both to the Community Levy budget (the 0.5% common external tariff that funds the Commission) and to the ECOMOG/ECOWAS Standby Force.
The Commission, formerly the Executive Secretariat, was rebuilt in Abuja in the 1990s and moved to its present Asokoro complex. The President of the Commission, the Council of Ministers, and the ECOWAS Parliament all sit in Abuja; the ECOWAS Court of Justice sits at Three Arms Zone.
Major Nigerian-led ECOWAS interventions trace back to decisions taken in this building: Liberia (1990, ECOMOG), Sierra Leone (1997), Côte d'Ivoire (2002), The Gambia (2017), and the contested standoff with Niger (2023–2024). The 2023 Niger crisis, in particular, exposed the limits of Nigerian-led regional enforcement when the Senate refused to authorise the threatened military intervention.
The building also hosts the Sahel/Lake Chad emergency coordination cells and the West African Health Organization secretariat.