ECOWAS Council Charges Nigeria, 8 Others On Brown Card Automation

The Council of Bureaux of the ECOWAS Brown Card Insurance Scheme has mandated Nigeria and eight other African countries in the West African region on automation of its brown card.

Of the 14 countries that made up the scheme, only Bénin, Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, the Gambia and Togo have effectively automated the issuance of the brown card certificate.

Speaking on the resolution reached at its 38th Ordinary Session last week in Lomé, Republic of Togo, its chairman, Mr. Ganiyu Musa, said, the congress regretted that, 5 years after the adoption by the fifty-first Ordinary Session of the ECOWAS Authority of Heads of State and Government of the Supplementary Act AISA.3/6/16 on the Automatic Issuance of the ECOWAS Brown Card, nine countries are still lagging in automation.

To this end, Musa, who is also the group managing director/CEO, Cornerstone Insurance Plc said, the Assembly urged the affected countries to take the necessary measures to comply with the provisions of the Act before the 39th Ordinary General Assembly.

Stating that the general Assembly, in order to curb fraud and falsification of brown card certificates on the one hand, and to strengthen the finances of the PGS, decided to centralise the series of ECOWAS brown card certificates.

“To this end, it recommends that National Bureaux liaise with the Permanent General Secretariat for the series numbers to be written on the attestations to be issued. The price of transferring encrypted numbers to National Bureaux is set at twenty five (25) CFA francs per certificate,” he pointed out.

On the digitalisation of the third party liability insurance policy and the ECOWAS brown card certificate, he said: “the general Assembly, by means of resolution 8 of the 37th General Assembly and considering the various presentations made by the IT solution providers on digitalisation at the second Zonal Meeting of the Year 2022 in Niamey, warmly congratulates the countries that have successfully implemented the digitalisation of the third-party liability insurance policy.”

The general Assembly, he said, applauded these efforts and encourages these countries to digitise the brown card certificate. Furthermore, the Assembly urges the other member countries of the Scheme to follow suit.

Reacting on strengthening collaboration with AfCFTA, Musa, who was the immediate past chairman of the Nigerian Insurers Association(NIA), noted that, the general Assembly, having considered the importance of trade flows between ECOWAS member States of the Brown Card Insurance Scheme and other AfCFTA member States, decided, in the current context of globalisation, to strengthen collaboration with these other States.

To this effect, it instructed its executive committee to study the issue and propose possible ways and means for such collaboration, he stressed.