After the tension generated by the threat of military intervention and the stand-off between the Niger junta and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the statement by Nigeria’s President and ECOWAS Chairman Ahmed Bola Tinubu on Thursday in Abuja, appears to indicate movement positive toward a compromise on how to restore constitutional order in Niger.
“…General Abdulsalami Abubakar (a Nigerian former military Head of State) instituted a nine-month transition programme in 1998, and it proved very successful, leading the country into a new era of democratic governance,” Tinubu told a delegation of Islamic leaders, adding: that he “…sees no reason why such cannot be replicated in Niger, if Niger’s military authorities are sincere.”
The Brig.-Gen. Abdourahamane Tchiani-led Niger junta, which toppled his former boss President Mohamed Bazoum, had announced a 36-month transition programme, which has been rejected by ECOWAS.
It is obvious from President Tinubu’s statement that ECOWAS is open to a shorter transition timetable.
Tchiani and his colleagues should therefore, seize the opportunity and agree a negotiated and more acceptable timetable of say 9-18 months and return to their barracks. This is enough time to organise a credible election, under an ECOWAS-led support and guidance by the international community.
However, the involvement of external interests, particularly France and the U.S. are not helping matters in Niger.
In fact, the latest Niger coup (the country has experienced several since independence from France in 1960), has further exposed the hypocrisy, inconsistency, double standards, if not perfidy of the West in its relations with Africa.
Scholars and commentors who argue that after more than six decades of independence, African countries should stop citing slavery and colonialism as excuses for the continent’s backwardness or underdevelopment do have a point given the level of corruption, resource mismanagement and governance failures under the watch post-independent African leaders.
Even so, it is not a conspiracy theory, but an evidence-based (factual) submission that imperialism and neocolonialism constitute a dangerous clog to Africa’s development.
The Niger coup was the seventh in four former French colonies in West Africa in three years with two each in Mali and Burkina Faso and one each in Mali and Guinea.
These are all member States of the 15-nation Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and before the 2020 coup in Mali, all members of regional bloc operated one form of civilian administration or another.
International reactions to the coups in Mali, Guinea and Burkina Faso followed a similar pattern – condemnation, suspension of membership from ECOWAS and the African Union, imposition of sanctions and then negotiated political transition programmes, which are being implemented by the juntas.
Meanwhile, in neighbouring Chad, another former French colony, which is in Central Africa and not a member of ECOWAS, international reaction is markedly different to the unconstitutional change of government.
In April 2021, the President of Chad, Idris Derby Ito, was assassinated by Chadian rebels and against the country’s constitution, his son, army general Mahamat Kaka seized power, in a manner many described as a coup.
Surprisingly, French President was one of the few dignitaries that graced Mahamat Derby’s inauguration to succeed his father. Recall that France was among the vociferous voices that condemned the coups in Mali, Guinea, and Burkina Faso, but perhaps, the principles of democracy did not matter in Chad.
Relations between France and Mali became so bad that the junta expelled Paris Ambassador and French troops from Mali. The troops were moved to Niger.
Then fast forward to the coup in Niger and the unusual outrage and reactions by Washington and Paris.
From the palpable diplomatic frenzy in the French and American capitals, it is obvious that Niger is unlike Mali, Guinea, and Burkina Faso.
American and France have military bases and with other Western allies, maintain an estimated combined troop strength of 3,000. Niger is also rich in uranium, craved by nuclear power countries such as France, which sources about 50% of its power from the Niger mines, while more than 80% of Nigeriens remain in darkness.
In the estimation of France, America and their Western Allies, Niger is strategic importance, but the interests of Niger’s estimated 26 million poverty-stricken and long-suffering people does not matter in this geopolitical equation.
Macron looks on as France’s Africa policy crumbles
French President Macron with a Senior Niger Junta OfficialGabon’s ousted president Ali Bongo – seen here with President Macron – has made moves to pull his country out of the Francosphere
By Hugh Schofield
BBC News, Paris
Why is it so often that problems seem to get worse just when they ought to be getting better?
Or in a French-African context, how come President Emmanuel Macron is surveying the tatters of French policy – coups in four Francophone states – just when he thought he had turned his back on all the wicked post-colonialism of the old days?
No-one disputes that there was indeed a long period – roughly corresponding to the Cold War – when France used a certain amount of skulduggery and military muscle to further its interests in La Françafrique.
But no-one can dismiss, either the fact that for the last quarter-century the message from Paris has been that those days – officially at least – are over.
Gone the automatic request for French soldiers to back up a teetering autocrat; gone the millions in backhanders that helped finance French political parties.
Instead, today’s buzzwords are “democratisation”, “empowerment”, “co-operation”, and “engagement with the young”. According to an official at the Élysée Palace: “It’s been a very long time since we had our men in presidential palaces.”
Maybe it would be naive to pretend that all is above board, and that there aren’t still nefarious pressures and sweeteners passing back and forth between Paris and francophone capitals.
But surely it is also a wild exaggeration to claim that French influence is anything like it used to be.
To take the case of Gabon – often seen as the emblem of corrupt post-colonialism – it is certainly true that deposed President Ali Bongo’s father Omar Bongo was regarded condescendingly as “one of ours” by successive French presidents, and benefited accordingly, as did they.
But if French reach is still so great, how is it that Ali Bongo made moves to pull Gabon out of the Francosphere to the point of actually joining the Commonwealth last year.
Why young Africans are celebrating military takeovers.
The Bongos’ amassment of wealth – and its secretion in Paris – was no doubt legendary. But was it not the action of French anti-corruption judges, unimpeded by politicians, that led to its exposure and to criminal proceedings against members of the Bongo family, arguably pushing Ali into the arms of the Anglos?
And if Paris still has pull over neighbouring Cameroon, how come its leader Paul Biya recently attended the Franco-Russian summit in St Petersburg, smiling alongside Vladimir Putin?
The fact is – according to journalist Amaury Coutansais, author of Macron’s African Trap – that France is living through a “historical anachronism”, in which it is attributed powers that simply do not exist anymore.
“Africa has been globalising,” he says. “These days African presidents have the whole world in their waiting-rooms: Turks, Russians, Israel, even allies of France like Germany and the United States.”
“Oppositions in Africa imagine that France is still all-powerful. In reality, while France was doing all the dirty police work, its rivals were sweeping up the contracts.”
Cameroon President Paul Biya (left) attended the second Russia-Africa summit in St Petersburg in July
So to return to the original question: if French influence is on the wane in Africa, how come it is now that we are seeing the fiercest backlash against it?
Surely it would have been more appropriate when former President Charles De Gaulle’s Monsieur Afrique, Jacques Foccart, really was arranging coups d’état in the 1960s and beyond, and when bags of dirty money really were transiting to Le Bourget airport near Paris.
The answer comes in two parts.
First, there is some deep-rooted psychological reason why, in all sorts of areas, the perception of a problem’s seriousness grows in proportion to its apparent amelioration. There’s probably a law somewhere that describes the process.
When people are deeply buried in an injustice or discrimination, they find it hard to see the bigger picture. Small improvements are all that can be expected and are welcomed. Only when people begin to imagine a full emancipation, do they perceive the full extent of their subjection. And they get angrier.
That’s one theory. France’s colonial presence in the Sahel and Central Africa was so entrenched that it was bound to provoke an increased sense of outrage among today’s more self-confident generations. As Coutansais says: “Everything passes – except the past.”
The second explanation does not contradict the first, but acts as a complement.
This is that the French are not wrong in seeing outside hands at work.
Charles de Gaulle (centre) with Barthélemy Boganda (right), founder of the pro-independence Social Evolution Movement of Black Africa, in 1958
In a speech to French ambassadors on Monday, President Macron described the “baroque alliance between self-proclaimed pan-Africans and neo-imperialists” which he said had provoked the recent “epidemic of putsches” in French-speaking Africa, referring to Gabon, Niger, Burkina Faso, Guinea and Mali.
In President Macron’s eyes, the “neo-imperialists” are Russia and China, which he believes have dripped poison words into the over-eager minds of wannabe putschists, and hypocritically stirred up old arguments over sovereignty and colonial exploitation.
For him, France is in the Sahel not for the sake of overpowering its former colonies, but “because there is a terrorist threat, and sovereign states asked us to help”.
To believe otherwise, he said on Monday, was to live in a “world gone mad”.
Quite evidently, though, many people do prefer the conspiracy theory, which is why, just when things should be getting better – they are getting worse.
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