NIGER COUP LEADERS AGREE TO TRANSITION BACK TO CIVILIAN RULE
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The chief diplomat of mediator Togo said on Thursday that the ruling military of Niger has agreed to the terms and circumstances of a return to civilian government and will offer the idea to a regional bloc.
The junta-appointed prime minister of Niger, Ali Mahaman Lamine Zeine, and the foreign minister, Bakary Yaou Sangare, had agreed “on the content and timing of the transition,” according to Togo’s Robert Dussey, speaking on Niger’s national television.
“We are ready to present the plan… to the mediating heads of state and the ECOWAS Commission,” he said, referring to the Economic Community of West African States.
Following President Mohamed Bazoum’s coup in July, which made Niger the most recent nation in the Sahel to have a coup, the regional alliance imposed strict sanctions, halted commerce, and raised the possibility of military action.
Niger, which was previously among the world’s poorest nations, is now economically hanging by a thread as a result of the sanctions and the suspension of international help and financing.
The military chiefs declared in October that the “heavy sanctions imposed by international and regional organisations” would result in a 40% reduction in the budget for 2023.
Any relaxation of the punitive sanctions against Niger, according to ECOWAS leaders in Abuja on Sunday, is subject to a “short transition” period.
The group also resolved that the Nigerien military chiefs’ obligations to be implemented would be negotiated by a committee composed of the presidents of Benin, Togo, and Sierra Leone.
Niger’s Tele Sahel network reports that mediator Dussey and his Sierra Leonean counterpart, Timothy Kabba, will be back in Niamey in January.
Niger has been “suspended from all decision-making bodies” of ECOWAS, the body announced on Thursday, “until constitutional order is re-established.”
The military authorities in Niger have previously stated that they would want to see a return to civilian authority take up to three year
Since the coup, Niger — one of the Sahel nations battling long-running and bloody insurgencies by rebels affiliated with Al-Qaeda or the Islamic State group — has rowed back security cooperation with Western partners and expelled French troops based there.
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