The Reasons Underlying the Coup in Niger

 By Henry Srebrnik, [Saint John, N.B.] Telegraph-Journal

This past July 26, armed troops in Niger overthrew the government, arrested the elected president, Mohamed Bazoum, and seized power. The junta, led by General Abdourahmane Tchiani, proclaimed themselves the National Council for the Safeguard of the Homeland (CNSP).

 Nigeriens who welcomed the coup gathered in the capital city, Niamey, Aug. 6, to show their support for the new military regime, some waving the Russian flag. If Niger’s junta manages to stay in power, might it align itself with Moscow?

Since 2020, there have been coups throughout the Sahel, the belt stretching across Africa just below the Sahara Desert. In 2020, Mali’s government fell. In 2021, the same thing happened in Guinea. Last year, a coup took place in Burkina Faso. Niger was seen as the Sahel’s final bulwark against chaos and instability.

The most surprising threat to Tchiani’s plans has emerged from a major regional power broker, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). The bloc of 15 West African countries, with Nigeria as its most powerful member, has taken a hard-line stance against the coup and have threatened to take military action.

“One reason why regional presidents are interested in military intervention is because they’re increasingly scared of being taken out themselves,” according to Professor Nic Cheeseman, an expert on African politics at the University of Birmingham. “It comes after several other coups in the region, and they realized that they could be next if they didn’t draw a line in the sand.”

Any military intervention by the bloc could further strain regional ties, as juntas in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Guinea have voiced support for Niger’s new military rulers.

Mali’s military leader Assimi Goita has spoken to Russian President Vladimir Putin about the situation. Putin “stressed the importance of a peaceful resolution of the situation,” Goita reported.

More than 10 million of Niger’s 26 million people are living in extreme poverty. One of the poorest countries in the world, it receives close to $2 billion a year in official development assistance. This, and political instability, have been the backdrop to four previous coups.

Niger struggles with a security crisis in its hinterland areas bordering Nigeria, Burkina Faso, and Mali, where armed groups continue to menace civilians as well as carry out repeated attacks against the Nigerien and foreign security forces. Seventeen Niger soldiers were killed Aug. 15 in an attack by suspected jihadists.

President Bazoum, who hails from Niger’s small Arab minority, in a predominantly Black Hausa nation, was successful in winning office in February 2021, but the country has in many ways remained at the mercy of former colonial power France and the United States.

The two have sought to use the country as a regional base and garrison for the purpose of safeguarding the Sahel area of West Africa from the threat of Islamist insurgent groups, including al-Qaida and Islamic State, who directly threaten Niger, as well as Burkina Faso, Mali, and some areas in Chad.

The U.S. has two military bases in Niger, including a drone base, with an estimated 1,100 soldiers, while the French presence in the country is estimated at 1,500 military personnel.

France, which is mostly powered by nuclear energy, gets roughly some 10 to 15 per cent of its uranium supplies from Niger, its main source of supply. It has condemned the coup, demanded the release of President Bazoum, who is now accused of “high treason,” and refused any suggestion that its military forces leave the country.

In any case, despite claims by Paris and Washington that the coup overturned democracy, things were far from good prior to the current putsch. The country’s status as a model of stability in a fraught international region was to some extent more in the imagination of Western diplomats than reality.

The military takeover has followed at least two other coup attempts since 2021, one of which occurred just two days before President Bazoum’s inauguration. Over the years, both protest movements and critical journalists have been brought to heel through the Nigerien state’s liberal use of bribery and threats, including fiscal auditing and other administrative chicanery. Civil society activism had become a spent force and the independence of the media was considerably diminished.

When Bazoum won the presidential election, he and his Nigerien Party for Democracy and Socialism (PNDS) promised reforms. Yet when a protest coalition called M62 (Sacred Union for the Safeguarding of the Sovereignty and Dignity of the People), founded in August 2022, attempted to mobilize popular resentments, it was foiled by the regime.

Nigerien politics had previously operated based on opposing coalition blocs that jockeyed for position and forced each one to compromise with one another. This created a political balance that gave hope to opposition forces. But it was this balance that the PNDS set out to destroy, in a bid to consolidate its permanent hold on power.

The dominance of the PNDS had deleterious consequences for Niger’s democracy. It depoliticized the public sphere, which thereby increased the politicization of other areas of national life, including the civil service, where promotion came to depend on allegiance to the party and its coalition, and the army.

De facto single-party rule was established. As is often the case, it’s then usually only the military that can put an end to it.