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Niger: What to expect from the military men that led the coup?
The West African economic bloc ECOWAS gave Niger's putschists an ultimatum to bring back order before this coming Sunday. But, for now, president Bazoum is still under arrest in his palace in Niamey. Meanwhile, foreign mediations and sanctions have brought no results.
While army coup leaders cling on to power, Niger still waits for president's liberation.
On Thursday, US President Joe Biden called for his immediate release, urging the "preservation of Niger's hard-earned democracy".
The president of Nigeria, Bola Tinubu, is hosting a meeting with the regional defence chiefs in the capital Abuja between until this Friday 4 August, as the new leader of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).
Nigeria and Niger's traditional international partners such as France and the USA put sanctions in place against the putschists.
But none of these measures have had any impact yet.
A predictable coup
According to Thierry Vircoulon, associate research fellow and coordinator of the Observatory of Central and Southern Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa Centre at the French Institute of International Relations (IFRI), ECOWAS has rarely put into actions his ambitious declarations, even in the cases of previous coups and coup attempts.
And neither ECOWAS nor the African Union have the means to actually lead a military operation on the ground.
He told me that "what is at stake for now is the liberation of president Bazoum, nothing much".
According to him, the military coup could have been expected, both by Niger and France, which was assuring security operation in the country, against jihadists in particular.
"The leader of the presidential guard knew he had a chance to be dismissed," Vircoulon said, "as the level of corruption of the military and the security forces was becoming unsustainable."
To him, the more funds France injected in the "fight against terrorism", the more the military kept that money for themselves, creating an impossible situation for the president and his government.
On Friday 28 July, the leader of the junta, General Abdourahamane Tchiani, who stopped several coup bids in Niger, notably in 2021 and 2022, said his action was "motivated solely" by the desire to tackle "the continuing deterioration of the security situation, as the deposed authorities failed at it.
He promised to offer "a glimpse of a real solution for ending the crisis."
Lack of democratic power
Vircoulon adds that no political party or member of the civil society had voiced much support in favour of Bazoum.
"This show that this president has no popular support," he told me. "He is not perceived as a representation of a democratic process but more of a transactional power, based on cronyism."
To him, the coup shows the lack of democracy in Niger, as the coups in Mali and Burkina also revealed.
"These countries are not democracies," he stated.
As for the foreign support to the junta, they are to be minimised, he said.
"It is very easy to give a few people a few hundreds of CFA to hold a Russian flag, or to repeat conspiracy theories about the former colonial ruler, France," he explained. "The military knows how to designate an enemy, as this rhetoric easily works on citizens," who are living in poverty and don't feel represented by anyone.
It is hard to know more about what Nigeriens really want, he adds, because no opinion poll is ever conducted in the country, and members of civil society have been very quiet.
Only a few have published a statement, like the group known as "Tournons La Page", which urged military junta in Niger to assure a "rapid return to normal constitutional order", and all parties to "not inflame tensions or fuel radical rhetoric that could lead to war."
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An edited version of this text was published by RFI English on Friday 4 August.
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