Tunji Wusu –
A day after being overthrown in a military coup, Niger’s President Mohamed Bazoum defiantly promised to defend “hard-won” democratic victories on social media on Thursday.
Hassoumi Massoudou, the nation’s foreign minister, also made a call to action for “all democrats and patriots” to prevent the coup on X, the site that replaced Twitter.
They made their declarations after troops on national television on Wednesday night announced that Bazoum had been deposed and that all republican institutions had been suspended, making this the seventh coup in West and Central Africa since 2020.
Members of the presidential guard earlier on Wednesday stopped Bazoum inside the presidential palace in the nation’s capital Niamey.
Concern over instability in a nation that is a key ally for Western powers fighting an insurgency in the Sahel region was raised on a regional and global scale as a result.
According to Massoudou, Bazoum was still being kept within the presidential palace on Thursday morning, according to a French television station called France 24. Unknown was the minister’s current location.
On Thursday morning, Niamey was quiet as residents awoke to military-imposed border closures and a national curfew.
A Reuters correspondent reported that some Bazoum supporters had congregated in the city as the situation on Wednesday developed to express their opposition to a change of leadership. Later, they were scattered.
Who has assumed command has not yet been made apparent. The presidential guard is led by General Omar Tchiani, although Colonel Amadou Abdramane of the air force read the televised speech.
Abdramane claimed that the defense and security forces had responded to failing security and poor governance while sitting in an office rather than in the television studio and backed by nine other officers wearing fatigues.
Land-locked Former French colonies like Niger are among those in West Africa fighting Islamic terrorists who have been waging a bloody insurgency there for the past ten years.
Since 2020, there have been two coups in Burkina Faso and two in Mali, mostly as a result of frustrations at the state’s inability to stop violent attacks on towns and villages.
Since relations with the military administrations in Burkina Faso and Mali deteriorated, forcing foreign force withdrawals, Niger’s position in the war against the jihadists had grown increasingly crucial for Western powers.
