Speculation is very unhelpful, as are uncited claims. It's just not.
FYI: Your assumption is wrong. The language used for instruction in most universities in ECOWAS is either English or French, and mostly English. If you're talking about the research, or anything vaguely like leadership, all people doing this will speak primarily English as the lingua franca.
The related problem is that e.g. Nigerian English or Ghanian English isn't the same as British or American, and academic journals do discriminate on this sort of thing, very explicitly.
FYI: Your assumption is wrong. The language used for instruction in most universities in ECOWAS is either English or French, and mostly English. If you're talking about the research, or anything vaguely like leadership, all people doing this will speak primarily English as the lingua franca.
You can figure that out with by googling this:
https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=top+universities+ecowas&ia=...
And visiting their web pages.
The related problem is that e.g. Nigerian English or Ghanian English isn't the same as British or American, and academic journals do discriminate on this sort of thing, very explicitly.