The military coup in Niger is the fifth the country has experienced since independence from France in 1960. Land-locked, uranium-rich Niger is among the world’s poorest countries.
President Mahamadou Issoufou had held power for a decade from 2011, before handing over to his protégé, the recently ousted Mohamed Bazoun.
Coup leader Gen Abdourahamane Tchiani, the former head of the presidential guard, is now consolidating power within the military. Bazoun had caused discontent within the country’s brass hats by sacking chief of staff Gen Salifou Modi, and was reportedly preparing to replace Tchiani.
The putsch thus seems to have been a pre-emptive strike, with Tchiani able to exploit grievances such as continuing challenges battling jihadists across the Niger-Mali-Burkina Faso tri-border area, and the rising cost of living.
With newly installed Nigerian president Bola Tinubu having been elected chair of the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas), the subregional body announced the severance of trade and electricity to Niger, banned flights, froze financial assets and ineptly gave Niger’s military junta a week to surrender power to Bazoun or face military intervention.
This ill-conceived ultimatum has come and gone, leaving Ecowas with egg on its face. On August 10 its leaders contradictorily ordered a subregional force to restore constitutional order in Niger, while simultaneously stressing the need to use peaceful means to achieve this.
One of Tchiani’s first acts after declaring himself president was to announce renewed military co-operation with anti-French military regimes in Mali and Burkina Faso. Bamako and Ouagadougou reciprocated by announcing that they would regard any Ecowas intervention as a “declaration of war” on them.
Guinea’s military regime has also been supportive of Niger’s putschists, who announced the end of defence accords with France, demanding that Paris withdraw its troops from the last Gallic staging post in the Sahel. Military-dominated Algeria — with a 1,000km border with Niger — has also opposed any Ecowas intervention.
French soldiers
Unlike praiseworthy Nigerian-led Ecowas interventions in Liberia and Sierra Leone in the 1990s, Tinubu has to contend with parliament and public opinion in launching what would be an unpopular intervention in Niger. With Nigeria burdened by $100bn in public debt, its ill-equipped military is a shadow of its former self, struggling even to pacify domestic militants.
French soldiers have been protecting uranium mines in northern Niger, and Paris has 1,500 troops in the country. France was expelled from Mali and Burkina Faso for failing to wage an effective counterterrorism insurgency over the last decade. Washington has a $110m drone and airbase in Niger with 1,100 troops. Uncle Sam has thus committed to restoring Bazoun to power.
However, due to the strong anti-Western sentiment in Niger a Franco-American backed Ecowas intervention could be perceived as an effort to protect Paris and Washington’s military and economic interests in the country. Moscow, like Beijing, has criticised the coup, while Russia’s Wagner chief, Yevgeny Prigozhin — whose mercenaries are supporting regimes in Mali and Central African Republic — has welcomed the junta.
Fragility
The Niger coup has glaringly exposed the fragility of many African governments. As US president John F Kennedy famously noted in 1962: “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” Many democratically elected governments in Africa have traditionally closed off political systems by autocratically clamping down on genuine opposition, making the military the only viable alternative for political change.
However, self-serving soldiers have failed as spectacularly as politicians to transform African societies. With a quarter of Ecowas states now under military rule, regimes in Senegal, Ivory Coast, Guinea-Bissau, Gambia, Togo, and Sierra Leone could all be vulnerable to coups if democratic governance is not carefully managed.
Even the kleptocratic regional Gulliver — Nigeria — must get its get its own house to prevent the return of military “Men on Horseback”.
• Adebajo is professor and senior research fellow at the University of Pretoria’s Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship.
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