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Military war imminent in Niger, as ECOWAS readies soldiers to oust junta
West Africa’s regional bloc on Wednesday said a military intervention in junta-ruled Niger was “the last resort” as Nigeria cut electricity supplies to intensify pressure on the country’s coup leaders.
As ex-colonial power France sent in a fifth plane to evacuate its citizens, coup leader General Abdourahamane Tiani insisted they had no reason to quit the country.
Joining the departures, the United States ordered a partial evacuation of its embassy in Niamey.
West African military chiefs were meeting in Nigeria’s capital Abuja to frame a response while a delegation was in Niger for negotiations, a week after the coup that shook the fragile nation.
Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) leaders on Sunday imposed trade and financial sanctions, giving the coup leaders a week to reinstate Niger’s democratically elected president or face the possible use of force.
“(The) military option is the very last option on the table, the last resort, but we have to prepare for the eventuality,” said Abdel-Fatau Musah, ECOWAS commissioner for political affairs, peace and security.
An ECOWAS team headed by former Nigerian leader Abdulsalami Abubakar was in Niger for talks, he added at the start of a three-day meeting of the grouping’s military chiefs in Abuja.
West Africa’s pre-eminent military and economic power Nigeria, the current chair of ECOWAS, has vowed a firm line against coups that have proliferated across the region since 2020.
A source in Niger’s power company, Nigelec, said Nigeria had cut electricity to its neighbour as a result of the sanctions.
Niger, one of the world’s poorest countries, depends on Nigeria for 70 percent of its power.
Junta-ruled Mali and Burkina Faso have warned any military intervention in their neighbour would be tantamount to a “declaration of war” against them.
General Salifou Mody, one of the Niger coup leaders, arrived with a delegation in Mali’s capital Bamako on Wednesday. In an interview broadcast on Malian state television that evening, he stressed the need for cooperation between the two countries.
Russia on Wednesday called for “urgent national dialogue” in Niger and warned that threats of intervention “will not help ease tensions or calm the domestic situation.”
Later Wednesday, the World Bank became the latest international organisation to announce it was suspending aid to Niger “other than private sector partnerships”.
President Mohamed Bazoum, 63, was feted in 2021 after winning elections that ushered in Niger’s first-ever peaceful transition of power.
He took the helm of a country burdened by four previous coups since independence from France in 1960.
But after surviving two attempted putsches, Bazoum was overthrown on July 26 when members of his own guard detained him at the presidency.
Their commander, General Tiani, has declared himself leader, but his claim has been condemned internationally.
France organised evacuation flights from Niamey following hostile demonstrations at the weekend.
But in a televised address Wednesday, Tiani said French nationals had nothing to fear, insisting they had never been subject “to the least threat”.
He rejected the international sanctions imposed in response to the coup, saying he “refused to give in to any threat”.
By Wednesday, French planes had evacuated 992 people, 560 of them French citizens, said Paris.
The same day, the US State Department “ordered the departure of non-emergency U.S. government employees and eligible family members from Embassy Niamey”, it said in a statement.
Italy’s foreign ministry said it had evacuated 68 civilians, including Italians and other nationals living in Niger, who arrived in Rome early Wednesday.
Eighteen Italian soldiers were also on the flight.
Germany has urged its citizens to leave, but the United States — which has 1,100 troops stationed in Niger — has opted to not evacuate Americans for now.
Under Bazoum and his predecessor Mahamadou Issoufou, Niger has had a key role in French and Western strategies to combat a jihadist insurgency that has rampaged across the Sahel since 2012.
After joining a regional revolt in northern Mali, armed Islamists advanced into Niger and Burkina Faso in 2015 and now carry out sporadic attacks on fragile states on the Gulf of Guinea.
Countless civilians, troops and police have been killed across the region, while around 2.2 million people in Burkina Faso alone have fled their homes.
The impact has contributed to army takeovers in all three Sahel countries and inflicted devastating damage to economies at the very bottom of the world’s wealth table.
France’s anti-jihadist Burkina Faso mission had at its peak about 5,400 troops, supported by fighter jets, helicopters and drones.
But the mission was refocused on Niger last year, when France pulled out of Mali and Burkina Faso after falling out with their juntas.
Today, the reconfigured force has around 1,500 men, many of them deployed at an air base near Niamey.
Chidi Odinkalu, Nigeria’s fiery lawyer, law teacher and former Chairman of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), is emphatic that President Bola Tinubu is pushing to perpetuate himself in office, beginning with gaming the electoral process in 2027.
Odinkalu, Professor of Practice in International Human Rights Law at the Fletcher School, told his host Naija Unfiltered, a popular Nigerian podcast programme, that he was as sure as death that the President would not exit office in 2031, if he succeeded with his current gambit to remain in power beyond next year.
Hear him: “Yes. But as I said, let me repeat myself. There’ll be a third term. President Tinubu has not done all of this just for another four years. There will be a third term. And anybody who is doing, ‘it is not our portion,’ is not reading the evidence.”
To achieve this aim, the activist, who was also emphatic that the National Assembly, would play a role, added: “The current National Assembly is anything but national or an assembly. And if it’s an assembly, it’s not a parliamentary one. Many people have called it a rubber stamp, but I think that is actually abusive of rubber stamps. I think this National Assembly is a disgrace.
Citing how bizarre and completely compliant the national legislature had become to Tinubu, the ex-NHRC’s boss, stated: “If you can change your national anthem in less than 24 hours with no public hearing, no public consultation, no public involvement, it tells you you don’t have a country because a national anthem is fundamental to the construction of a national identity.”
Also referring to the current move by the President to introduce state police, Odinkalu, wondered how the Nigerian Senate would introduce the bill to that effect and proceed towards the first and second readings, as well as committee stage and passage in less than two hours, questioning how that was possible in normal clime.
Hear him: “Once we finish our elections, we’re going to amend our Constitution, introduce a single six-year presidential term. The current incumbent will be elected until 2031. In 2031, what will happen? The question will be, will he be entitled to run on the six-year term or will he not?
“You will then get the best Senior Advocates in Nigeria telling you the law is not retrospective. That is why the administration is supporting the litigation over President Jonathan’s tenure—not because the Constitution is not clear, but because they will say there is precedent. There will be a third term, and I’m prepared to bet on it.”
“If we continue to pay ransom, we are encouraging these criminals to kidnap more people. The cycle will only continue unless we stop rewarding criminality,” were the words of Dauda Lawal, Governor of Zamfara State, with which he blamed those in the habit of paying ransoms as the major factor fuelling the current wave of kidnapping incidents across the country.
Lawal, on Thursday at the ARISE News/THISDAY Town Hall Conference on State Police and National Security in Abuja, told his audience how he flatly refused to pay a ₦300 million ransom demanded by kidnappers who abducted his brothers in 2019.
Reiterating his opposition to negotiating with bandits and renewed his support for the establishment of state police, Lawal, while recounting the incident, said: “My own brothers were kidnapped in 2019, and the kidnappers demanded about ₦300 million. I told them I was not going to pay a dime. If they wanted to kill them, they could go ahead.”
Stating that his brothers were eventually released without any ransom being paid, he argued that paying ransom usually emboldened criminal groups by providing financial incentives for further kidnappings.
He added: “My position on ransom payments remains unchanged. I will not negotiate, and I will not pay ransom to any criminal, no matter what happens.”
Endorsing the move for the establishment of state police, to enable governors have greater operational authority over security within their states, he regretted that the current constitutional arrangement left governors with responsibility for security without corresponding powers to direct security agencies.
His words: “In as much as I am called the chief security officer of the state, I do not have the command-and-control authority to direct the operations of the security agencies. I’m prepared to support the funding of state police if the proposed policing structure is established. I’m confident that decentralised policing will improve intelligence gathering, response time and the overall fight against insecurity.”
Exactly seven years, two months and four days after he forced Walter Onnoghen, the 16th Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN) out of office, Danladi Umar, former Chairman of the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT), on Thursday, found himself in Kuje prison.
Justice Peter Kekemeke, of the High Court of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), sitting in Maitama, handed the ex-CCT boss the unwelcome package on Thursday, following his arraignment by the Federal Government on a four-count corruption charge.
Umar’s ordeal began after an investigations revealed that he abused his official position by conferring an undue advantage on himself while serving as head of the tribunal, having in 2021, reportedly using his wife’s bank account to collect the sum of N5.5 million from a contractor engaged to paint the headquarters of the CCT in Abuja.
He was also accuse of using the same account to collect another N6million on January 25, 2024, from a contractor who handled the digitisation of the CCT’s records and yet another N2.43 million a contractor paid as tuition fee of his daughter at Baze University, Abuja.
After pleading not guilty to offences, said to be punishable under section 19 of the Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Act, 2000, Christopher Mshelia, lawyer to the FG, prosecuting the matter, applied for his remand in a correctional facility, while urging the court to set a date for the commencement of trial.
His pleas to be freed on bail pending the determination of the case, was opposed by the prosecution, which drew the court’s attention to the fact that it had just been served with the bail application, saying it needed time to respond to it, forcing Kekemeke to adjourn the case till July 15 for hearing while the former CCT boss remained behind bars.
Umar, had as CCT Chairman, on January 23, 2019, issued a controversial ex parte order that led to the removal of a serving Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Justice Walter Onnoghen.
Following the ex parte order, the late President Muhammadu Buhari, on January 25, swore in the next most senior jurist of the Supreme Court, Justice Tanko Muhammad, to take over the leadership of the judiciary as Acting CJN.
Even though Onnoghen later voluntarily resigned his position as CJN on April 4, Umar went ahead and convicted him on April 18, 2019, on the federal government’s allegation that he had failed to properly declare his assets as required by law.
He gave the federal government the go-ahead to confiscate all monies in five accounts belonging to the former CJN, and also removed him as Chairman of both the NJC and the Federal Judiciary Service Commission (FJSC).
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