The European Union has announced that it will suspend all aid to Niger as a result of the coup last Thursday. The same has been announced by France, which had the African country as a strategic ally and which maintains 1,500 soldiers in the country, while the United States warned that it would do the same, according to what the US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, has stated from Australia.
"In addition to the immediate cessation of budgetary aid, all security cooperation is suspended indefinitely with immediate effect," said the head of European diplomacy, Josep Borrell, stating that the EU "does not and will not recognize" the coup plotters . The EU allocated 503 million euros to Niger from 2021 and up to the current budget in concepts of aid to governance, education and development. On the part of France, aid to the budget and development was 120 million euros in 2022. For 2023 something more was planned but it will not be disbursed, according to the Foreign Ministry.
For his part, Antony Blinken has warned the coup leaders that "our economic and security cooperation with Niger, which is significant, amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars, depends on the continuity of the democratic and constitutional order that has been broken by the actions of the last days".
In total, Niger receives about two billion dollars a year from the West, according to World Bank data.
Despite warnings from the EU, France and the US, which continued from early morning until late afternoon, the Nigerien military junta, headed by General Abdourahamane Tchiani, until now head of the Presidential Guard, It has shown itself favorable to cooperating with its neighbors Mali and Burkina Faso, countries already governed by coup juntas since 2021 and 2022, and which have been strengthening their ties with Russia. Until now he kept a prudent distance from them.
In fact, Niger has not officially participated in the Russia-Africa summit or forum in St. Petersburg. However, the media close to the Wagner mercenary group immediately released a photo of their boss, Yevgueni Prigozhin, with a Nigerian representative in a hotel in the Russian city.
After the coup on Thursday, on Telegram channels close to Wagner an audio of an alleged statement by Prigozhin was broadcast in which he supports the coup, saying that "what happened in Niger is nothing other than the struggle of the Nigerien people against the colonizers.
General Tchiani, the self-proclaimed new head of state and who has kept President Mohamed Bazoum under arrest since Wednesday night, met for the first time with ministers and officials. The meeting took place in the presidential palace in the capital, Niamey, whose streets seem to be calm.
General Mohamed Toumba, one of the soldiers who ousted President Mohamed Bazoum, told state television that the junta asked civil servants to carry on with their work as usual after the suspension of the constitution. “The message that was given was not to stop the processes in progress, to continue with things,” said the general. Everything that needs to be done will be done."
In response, the African Union gave the military junta a fifteen-day ultimatum to reinstate the democratically elected government. It is unknown what could give force to that ultimatum, which also suggests that General Tchiani could be acting on behalf of former president Mahamadou Issoufou, who resigned in 2021 after a decade in office. At least that's what Ulf Laessing, head of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation's program for the Sahel, believes. According to Laessing, Tchiani is close to Issoufou.
Antony Blinken spoke by phone on Saturday with the ousted Bazoum but also with former president Issoufou, whom he reminded that there are hundreds of millions of dollars at stake and called for "efforts" to resolve the situation in favor of a civilian government, according to a statement from the Department of State.
