Niger coup shows how pendulum in West Africa is swinging to Russian-backed autocracy
For supporters of the coup in Niger, the military government’s defiance in the face of calls to reinstate the country’s ousted president is being hailed as a show of sovereignty.
Defence chiefs of the West African regional body known as ECOWAS had agreed on a possible military action plan if Mohamed Bazoum, who was democratically elected, was not released and reinstated by Sunday.
But as the deadline passed, thousands of pro-coup demonstrators filled a football stadium in the capital Niamey in support of the country’s military leaders.
Another pro-junta protest of around a hundred people set up a picket at a Niamey air base, while similar rallies sprung up in major towns across the country.
Military coups are not always particularly popular, especially when the leader who was overthrown was voted in.
The question therefore remains – why are Nigeriens not supporting their democratically elected president?
The answer can be found in the city of Agadez – home to a US drone airbase and a spring of rising discontent over unkept promises of security and economic stability under democracy.
While Niamey has always been a hotbed of opposition, in the days that followed the coup the civic society movement M62 organised a march in Agadez decrying ECOWAS, France and Western intervention.
Holding up placards with anti-French slogans, the demonstration was also a venue for growing anger against the US airbase and the ineffectiveness of foreign military cooperation against an ongoing jihadist insurgency.
“We see lots of planes taking off but the security situation doesn’t change and thus the population wonders – ‘what is this base all about?'” – says Ibrahim Manzo Diallo, a journalist from Agadez.
There are around 1,100 US troops stationed between the Niamey and Agadez airbases.
Meanwhile, 1,500 French troops remain deployed across the country.
While they are yet to be formally kicked out by the junta, the protests are making it clear that they are no longer welcome.
The M62 national co-ordinator Sanoussi Mahaman told Sky News that they demand the departure of all foreign troops from Nigerien soil and urgent investigations of corruption under President Bazoum – who heavily stifled the protest movement while in power and detained their leader Abdoulaye Seydou for nine months since April 2023.
At all of these rallies, there is a smattering of Russian flags being waved.
Far from proof that Russian mercenary group Wagner orchestrated this home-grown coup but rather a sign of what disillusionment with Western cooperation in West Africa now looks like: the pendulum is swinging to Russian-backed autocracy.
As diplomatic pressure fails to reverse the events destabilising Niger and tipping over the final domino in the Sahelian belt of military dictatorships, chaos feels certain.
“The only winners are the jihadists,” says Harouna Ibrahim, the head of Niger’s Press Union.