A colleague in Nigeria asked me what we should do if Nigeria wages war on Niger.

It’s not the sort of question I normally must field, but these are difficult times. A military coup in Niger last month has added extra instability to an already fragile region. 

We run a radio network in the Lake Chad basin, targeting areas where Boko Haram operates. Studios in Nigeria and Chad are not far from Niger and target listeners in that country. 

On 26 July, the head of Niger’s presidential guard, General Abdourahmane Tchiani, locked the democratically elected president, whom he had a mandate to protect, in the presidential palace and told the world that he was now in charge.

The new ruling junta immediately closed land borders and air space. The Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas) almost immediately imposed sanctions and warned that a military intervention could be imminent if constitutional order was not restored and President Mohamed Bazoum returned to the presidency.

Three weeks later, the putschists are looking increasingly unlikely to give in to outside pressure. This week, Tchiani announced a three-year transition period before any return to civilian rule. It’s a familiar line in this part of the world. Neither Ecowas nor the African Union have expressed any support for this plan, with Ecowas continuing to beat the war drums.

While potential military action in the region is unpopular, there’s much consensus that part of the deeply divided Ecowas membership feels it must flex its muscles to maintain credibility or risk losing whatever it has left. Already, member states Mali, Burkina Faso and Guinea Conakry have made it clear that any military action initiated by Ecowas will be viewed by them as an act of war. The military leaders of the region have voiced solidarity with each other. 

Meanwhile, the rotating head of Ecowas, Nigeria’s president, Bola Tinubu, is one of the main drivers for military action. The Nigerian senate has already come out against the move, as has virtually the entire population of Northern Nigeria. Tinubu is a southerner. Northern political analysts claim he doesn’t understand how close the ties are between Northern Nigerians and their neighbours in Niger. 

The border between the two countries is an artificial colonial creation — many thousands of people on one side of the border are closely related to those on the other side. They share the same language, the same religion, the same traditional leader and the same traditional customs. To expect them to fight each other is almost certainly too great an expectation. It’s not surprising that traditional leaders from Northern Nigeria were among the very few envoys that Tchiani’s envoys were willing to meet.

Reaction of the US and France

Perhaps the biggest unknown factor is how the two non-African countries with the biggest interests in Niger, the US and France, react over the coming days. Both countries have well over 1,000 troops in Niger — the Americans operate a large drone base in the northern city of Agadez while the French have their principal base at Niamey, which has, until recently, been used as the main European effort to stem Islamic militancy in the wider region, which includes Mali and Burkina Faso. 

The Americans are likely to make a deal with whoever remains in power over the longer term, to protect their assets. It’s more difficult to predict what the French will do. Perhaps in the short term, they’ll move their military assets to neighbouring Chad, where they already have their biggest regional base at N’Djamena. The determining factor here is whether Tchiani manages to hold on to his position.

Military coups are not a new development in the Sahel — this vast territory extending from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea and sandwiched between the Sahara Desert and the greener land to the south — and Niger is the most coup-prone of all of them. 

It was only recently that Niger experienced its first change of power through the ballot box. After former President Mahamadou Issoufou finished his second term, less than two years ago, his anointed successor, Bazoum, won a legitimate majority once the votes were counted. This was heralded as great news, both near and far. Then the short-lived honeymoon ended.

The military leaders of the region preside over countries that are home to the most severe poverty on the planet, with rapidly increasing populations who have little hope for either a decent education or a decent — more correctly, any — job. Niger is at the bottom of the development list.

The fact that all the countries in the region receive, in my opinion, far too much military aid to combat the threat of instability, combined with the conceived culture of impunity for those involved in military coups leaves a very short window of opportunity for any civilian government to attempt to correct decades of bad governance and rampant corruption. 

We may never know what, if any progress, a Bazoum administration may have left as a legacy in Niger. It remains to be seen whether Tchiani will make good on his claims to take Niger to a better place. The odds are stacked against him and the precedents do not make for favourable speculation. 

The armies of the region are not known for their light-handed approach; in fact, some of the methods used by the coup leaders in the Sahel have been taught to them on US soil at US military bases — that includes the military leaders of Guinea, Mali, Burkina Faso, Chad and now Niger. Others are likely to follow unless Western strategy changes. 

There is, however, always hope. The many young people of the region I have spoken with over the past few weeks seem to have a good feeling about Burkina Faso’s military leader, Ibrahim Traoré. He is regarded by some as a new version of the former Burkinabe military leader Thomas Sankara, whose short-lived reign started out well. History has a nasty habit of repeating itself. But if we don’t have confidence in the youth, we’re doomed. 

And what’s our security plan? The worse the situation becomes, the greater the need for credible communication in the region. We’re not here to become a casualty of war. We’re here to help prevent it. DM

David Smith is the executive director of Okapi Consulting, which implements and manages Radio Ndarason Internationale, a local language radio network in Chad, Niger, Nigeria, and Cameroon targeting areas where Boko Haram operates.