[3] The West African oyan's body is slender and long, with an elongated head and a pointed muzzle.

[3][1] The West African oyan is probably affected by habitat loss due to logging of tropical forests, and by hunting for bushmeat.

[1] The West African oyan was first described—in a paper read at the 26 November 1907 meeting of the Zoological Society of London and published the following May—by Reginald Innes Pocock, based on a zoological specimen collected in Liberia.

[2][4] Pocock considered it a subspecies of the Central African oyan, the trinomial in the original orthography being Poiana richardsoni leightoni, Poiana richardsoni liberiensis being printed in error.

[2][4] In 1974, Donovan Reginald Rosevear elevated "Leighton's linsang" from subspecies to independent species rank.