Is good sense now being applied to the Niger crisis?

ECOWAS has, over the years, faced some problems that seemed at first to be intractable.

Remember the murderous Charles Taylor/Foday Sankoh insurrectional episodes in Liberia and Sierra Leone in 1991-92? The barbarity experienced by the populace of the two countries during the period was so ugly that many Africans who watched it close at hand were astonished and traumatised by it.

What about the General Robert Guei/Laurent Gbagbo/Alhassan Ouattara confrontations in Cote d’Ivoire in 2000 and 2010-2011?

Those were days when the Economic Community of West African States [ECOWAS] was politically pushed to take sides in the internal affairs of a member country but managed to work out practicable solutions that eventually brought peace to Cote d’Ivoire. t By so doing, ECOWAS, through its military organisation, ECOMOG, prevented West Africa from crumbling into a polyglot lump of anarchic territories whose disintegration could spread death and hunger all over the Region.

ECOWAS, by bravely putting on its military armour, ECOMOG and stoically working to restore sanity to the politics of its embattled member nations, proved to the world that when chaos threatened to break out within its ranks, it was ready–and crafty enough – to prove that contrary to expectations, Africans are capable of settling their disputes without the need for outside interference.

ECOMOG deserves praise for having risen to the occasion and saving Liberia, Sierra Leone and Cote d’Ivoire from internecine armageddon. All three countries were helped to resume “normal” politics after ECOMOG had succeeded in assisting their people to drive out the armed brigands who had terrorised them for years.

That heroic era cannot be far from the memories of West Africa’s current rulers, as they ponder the military coup that took place in Niger on 26 July 2023… But alas, conditions have drastically changed in the ECOWAS region. Three members of the organisation – Guinea, Mali and Burkina Faso – are already under military rule. ECOWAS could not prevent that from happening. So, unfortunately, what might be called a “knee-jerk” reaction to the problem posed by the seizure of power by the military in Niger, is out of the question.

Not only that: Nigeria, the de facto leader of ECOWAS, is in no position to brandish either the financial/political, nor military clout, that could convince the Niger putschists that their best interests lie in reaching some sort of accommodation with ECOWAS.

Politics, it has been said, is the “art of the possible.” And in this case, the cultural and religious affinities that exist between Niger and many of the people of the northern states of Nigeria, suggest that a military attack on Niger by ECOMOG is not practicable. President Bola Tinubu, who has been in office for a mere ten weeks or so, and has an election petition hanging over his head, cannot dispatch an ECOMOG punitive expedition to Niger, with Nigerian soldiers at its head, without exposing his regime to attack by the Nigerian armed forces.

Indeed, some Northern Nigerian politicians have been uttering threats against Tinubu and warning him that military action by ECOWAS against the Niger putschists would constitute an act of “civil war by Nigerians against themselves”. And they have a point: there are (for instance) people of the Fulani and Kanuri ethnic groups in both Nigeria and Niger and social and business links between them are legion.

Meanwhile, the Nigerian Senate, without whose approval President Tinubu cannot constitutionally dispatch the Nigerian army to fight abroad, had refused to endorse such a military deployment, before it adjourned sitting for its holidays (which it casually embarked upon, as if the country’s situation was “normal”!)

How the Senate would react, if President Tinubu were to ask it to come back and sit in an emergency session to approve a war resolution, is, of course, a moot question.

Fortunately for President Tinubu, a powerful group of traditional and civil leaders of Northern Nigerian origin, has coalesced together and managed to cross Niger’s closed borders, to engage in dialogue with the Niger putschists. That the Niger coupists granted them an audience, when the self-same regime had been issuing defiant statements against ECOWAS, shows just how strong the aforementioned social ties between the two countries are.

The message the self-appointed delegation brought back from Niger to President Tinubu was that ECOWAS had erred in threatening the coupists with military action in the first instance, without pushing the diplomatic discussion angle to its full limit.

President Tinubu modified his utterances against the putschists even before he met the delegation on its return, and it would be a strange occurrence if the military option was not kicked into the long grass to ossify.

But if talks were to open between ECOWAS and the Niger regime, what would be the outcome? Surely, the Niger coupists will stick to their position that in carrying out their coup, they were “saving” their country from ex-president Mohamed Bazoum’s “reasonable actions” against Niger (for which they have threatened to put him on trial?)

No, any negotiations between the coupists and the ECOWAS leadership will not be easy. The coupists have adroitly appointed a 21-member new cabinet already, which includes several civilians. This is an obvious ploy to try and pre-empt any demand by ECOWAS, that the soldiers should return the country to “civilian rule”

The inclusion of civilians in the new government is also an ingenuous move to prevent the United States and its Western allies from withdrawing aid from Niger. Such a display of smart political footmanship suggests that the coup leaders are being teleguided by some powerful overseas advisors (drawn from Mali and Burkina Faso, (who faced the same problem of “recognition” after carrying out their coups.)

The Niger putschists may also be receiving covert political advice from American sources, because the Niger coup leader, General Abdourahmane Tchiani, is reported to have been trained at Fort Benning, an American war college.

Under an “anti-jihadist” programme launched across the Sahelian countries by “Africom”, the US has been training senior military officers from the West African Region in its military educational institutions in the US. In Niger, the US has gone further and constructed a major military base at Agades, where specialists in sophisticated drone warfare, drawn from many of the Sahelian countries, have been receiving training.

An American publication claims that the US has been involved in no less than nine coups d’etat in the West African region in recent years, including those that occurred in the two countries that have announced the strongest support for the Niger coup – Mali and Burkina Faso.

Unravelling the foreign element in Niger’s current politics is, as a result, a very confusing process. For instance, the Niger coupists – like their counterparts in Mali and Burkina Faso – have been making it unwelcome for French troops and personnel to remain on their territory, sometimes accusing the French of being on the side of, or even using the “jihadists” against the local authorities. Can that be true, or is it a matter of giving a dog a bad name?

For what is not in doubt is that France is fiercely hated by many of the people in its former colonial empire in Africa. They accuse France of filching their countries’ wealth away while leaving their people in dire poverty. For example: although French companies mine uranium in Niger, that country is among the five most impoverished nations in the world. Health and educational facilities in Niger are woeful and unemployment is a major problem there.

Hence, Niger, like Mali and Burkina Faso, are attractive to both military and economic adventurists. For instance, the nebulous Russian mercenary group, Wagner, is reported to be offering “military services” to all and sundry in the region. Is the Russian Government of Vladimir Putin encouraging this? It is difficult to tell.

That Wagner angle raises the following issue: if the Americans influence the top military personnel in Burkina Faso, Mali (and now Niger) as is supposed, why are they tolerating Wagner mercenary activity in the area?

A second question is this: has France ceased, in all but name, to be a trusted “NATO ally” of the US in West Africa? Do the interests of the two counties coincide in West Africa?

ECOWAS would be well advised to investigate and expertly weigh all these complex factors, as it ponders its options in seeking a viable solution to the problem posed to it by the Niger situation.

Of course, the ECOWAS leadership rightly detests any violent changes of government in ECOWAS member countries. But the leadership must be clever in reacting to such changes because being emotional over them cuts no ice. As the saying goes, “If wishes were horses, beggars would ride!”