Yesterday, for the second time since the coup, United States Secretary of States, Antony Blinken, again commended President Bola Tinubu’s leadership of ECOWAS and reiterated U.S. support to back the bloc’s efforts to restore constitutional order in Niger.
In a statement last night, Blinken said: “I spoke today with Nigerian President Bola Tinubu. I commended President Tinubu’s leadership of ECOWAS second Extraordinary Summit on the situation in the Republic of Niger. I noted the importance of maintaining pressure on the National Council for the Safeguard of the Homeland (CNSP) to restore constitutional order and to see President Bazoum and his family released.”
Washington also said it was “incredibly dismayed by the plan to try the detained president.”
The African Union (AU) also yesterday held talks on the Niger crisis as the country’s post-coup rulers sounded defiant, yet also pointing to diplomacy for a potential solution. Like ECOWAS’s reaction, talks at the AU’s headquarters in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa were nearly marred by a flare-up over threats by the regime to prosecute Niger’s deposed president.
“AU’s Peace & Security Council meets to receive an update on the evolution of the situation in Niger and the efforts to address it,” the pan-African body said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter.
hose who attended included AU Commission chief, Moussa Faki Mahamat, as well as representatives from Niger and the West African bloc ECOWAS.
While the communiqué from AU was still being expected last night, Mahamat had during the opening remarks expressed deep concern at the reported poor conditions of Bazoum’s detention, calling his treatment at the hands of coup leaders “unacceptable.”
Bazoum, whose election in 2021 was a landmark, was toppled by members of his presidential guard. His ousting unleashed a shockwave around West Africa, where Mali and Burkina Faso — likewise battered by a jihadist insurgency — have also suffered military takeovers. Seeking to stop the cascade, ECOWAS slapped sanctions on Niger and last week approved deployment of a “standby force to restore constitutional order.”
A landlocked nation in the heart of the arid Sahel, Niger is one of the world’s poorest and most turbulent countries. It frequently ranks at the bottom of the Human Development Index, a United Nations (UN) benchmark of prosperity.
Bazoum’s election in 2021 marked the first time that the country had experienced a peaceful transition of power since gaining independence from France in 1960. He survived two attempted coups before being ousted, in the fifth putsch in the country’s history.
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