Tall, fair, and handsome, Niger’s president, Mohamed Bazoum, delivered his speech during the opening session of the New Global Financial Pact Summit held June 22, 2023, in France.
He returned to his landlocked country, unbeknownst to him, to a life locked away in captivity.
On July 26, Mr Bazoum’s most senior military guard, General Abdourahamane Tchiani, turned on his principal, unseated him, and locked him up.
Mr Tchiani, together with his fellow coup plotters, has since ruled the Niger Republic to the admiration of his military cohorts in Burkina Faso, Guinea, and Mali.
A section of Niger’s population also interprets Tchiani’s military rule as opposite to France’s indirect rule of the country through democratically elected civilian proxies.
Yet, President Bazoum’s stunned colleagues all over the world insist Tchiani’s unilateral act was a travesty of the authority vested only in the people to remove or keep Bazoum in power at the general elections.
Mr Bazoum, a favourite of his predecessor President Issoufou, won the people’s mandate with 56% of the popular votes in 2021.
The coup plotters said they decided to “put an end to the regime that you know due to the deteriorating security situation and bad governance.“
What exactly do the mutinous soldiers mean by deteriorating security and bad governance?
Are these reasons sufficient for a set of soldiers to appropriate treason as the means to solve their country’s problems?
Is Tchiani justified to betray his boss? Did he need to betray his boss to save his country?
Most importantly, how did the soldiers measure deteriorating security and bad governance?
Should the destiny of a nation be steered based on the feelings of a few soldiers?
It would be seen that this latest coup in the Niger Republic was influenced more by a combination of palace politics and ethnic factors than the widely-mouthed reasons.
Let’s see.
Deteriorating Security?
While the military junta cited the “continually deteriorating security situation” as a core justification for the coup, ACLED argues that “Niger has statistically fared better than its neighbours in terms of violence and conflict.”
“The years of 2019 and 2020, during Issoufou’s reign, were particularly devastating for the Nigerien FDS as they suffered heavy losses due to a series of mass-casualty attacks perpetrated by IS Sahel. In 2021, Niger experienced a record year of conflict coinciding with its first democratic transition when Bazoum succeeded Issoufou.
“Ever since, Niger continues to see high numbers of conflict incidents, although levels of lethal violence are in steady decline, and significantly reduced in comparison to Mali and Burkina Faso”
Bad Governance?
Could the bad governance include President Bazoum’s intention to retire General Tchiani after the latter defended him and his predecessor during attempted coups?
An ACLED overview of the Nigerien situation reads: “While some interpret this event through the context of Russia’s increasing influence or its alignment with Western military training initiatives, the primary catalysts were essentially domestic in nature.
“The leader of the coup, General Abdourahamane Tchiani, was rumored to be on the verge of losing his position as head of the Presidential Guard – a role in which he had defended the regime against numerous attempted coups during the tenures of both former President Mahamadou Issoufou and his successor Bazoum. It is possible that growing discontent within the FDS had intensified over the years under the rule of Issoufou and his successor Bazoum.”
Or could bad governance mean Bazoum’s badmouthing of the mutinous military regimes in neighbouring countries, Burkina Faso, Guinea, and Mali, and his own inefficient army?
The ACLED review further notes that Niger was, until recently, France’s only ally in the central Sahel, while neighbouring countries had grown increasingly anti-French. President Bazoum’s criticism of Mali’s partnership with Russia’s Wagner Group and Burkina Faso’s self-defence militias has been perceived as patronizing and exacerbating violence.
Additionally, Bazoum’s recent comment about militants being stronger than the region’s armies may have been considered disrespectful by his soldiers and provided a rallying point for a successful coup this time.
We hope Niger’s security situation improves in the hands of the soldiers, unlike in similar Sahel countries, and governance gets better now with further isolation and sanctions against the military regime.
Fraternité
The first problem is Nigeriens’ broken brotherhood within.
The debate over the ethnicity and legitimacy of President Mohamed Bazoum is reported severally to have contributed to Niger’s latest coup. Bazoum is an ethnic Arab minority from Niger’s Diffa region.
Despite winning the election with about 56% of the vote in an election that the runner-up, Mahamane Ousmane, said was marred with fraud, his ethnic background is said to have created tensions within the military establishment, which largely comprises members of other ethnic groups.
Niger’s national motto, Fraternité, Travail, Progrès, seems to have been compromised with discrimination among ethnic groups in the country.
An international relations and diplomacy expert teaching at the U.S. International University in Nairobi, Dr. Edgar Githua, speaking on VOA, suggested Bazoum’s ethnicity and lack of popularity as one of the drivers of the Niger coup.
“He’s a Diffa Arab, and he came from a minority group … he came in and he was making lots of changes because he inherited a country that had bigger ethnic groups … we are talking about the Hausas, the Zamas, the Tuaregs, … and normally what happens for such presidents who inherit constituencies where they come from a minority, … they feel like they are under sieged. … because … you are in the minority and the other people who control government are from other ethnic groups who believe or do not feel, you deserve to lead them,”
The BBC also noted that “Gen Tchiani is from the majority Hausa ethnic group, and comes from Tillabéri region, a traditional recruiting ground for the military.” It added that “some analysts have wondered whether the overthrow of Mr Bazoum, who is from the minority Arab community, might open up ethnic tensions in Niger.”
The second problem is Niger’s broken brotherhood with France.
There is growing sentiments among francophone African countries that any government that befriends France could not work in the best interest of its own people. President Bazoum courted France and the West politically and economically, especially in military cooperation.