Niger - Election - 27 December 2020
Niger is a multiparty republic where the year 2020 was the last year in office for Niger's President Mahamadou Issoufou. Analysts expected the power transition to be peaceful and in accordance with the constitution, despite the regime’s authoritarian proclivities.
Significant human rights issues included credible reports of: unlawful or arbitrary killings, including extrajudicial killings by or on behalf of government; harsh and life-threatening prison conditions; arbitrary arrest or detention; serious restrictions on free expression and media, including unjustified arrests or prosecutions of journalists, and the existence of criminal libel laws; and lack of investigation of and accountability for gender-based violence including but not limited to domestic or intimate partner violence, and child, early and forced marriage.
Niger’s general elections on 27 December 2020 included ballots in the first round of the country’s presidential election and will also elect the 171 members of the National Assembly. For the presidency, if none of the candidates obtain an absolute majority of votes, a second round between the two candidates receiving the most votes would be held on 21 February 2021.
One the main innovations of the 2017 Electoral Code was the creation of a biometric voter roll (i.e., a roll that was based on unique physical features of an individual) and the issuance of biometric voter cards. According to the Electoral Code, biometric voter registration (BVR) in Niger includes photo and fingerprint identification of each eligible voter. The biometric voter cards are free, unique, personal, non-transferrable, and valid for 10 years. The Electoral Code established registration on the biometric voter roll as a right of all citizens who meet the legal requirements. Special biometric voter cards are available to persons with disabilities.
This election was the third time since Niger began its third democratic transition, in 2010, that citizens will democratically elect new leaders. Furthermore, given that President Mahamadou Issoufou will have served his two-term limit, these presidential elections are anticipated to be the first time in the country’s history that power passes peacefully via elections from one president to the next.
Notably, these elections will take place in a context of heightened political tension that has prevailed since 2015, when Issoufou’s political rival of several decades, former Prime Minister Hama Amadou, was arrested and detained. Amadou later went into exile in France. His supporters, who constitute a large share of the opposition, are boycotting many of Niger’s democratic institutions, including the Conseil national de dialogue politique and the Commission Électorale Nationale Indépendante. Civil society organizations, meanwhile, have decried what they perceive as a failure of the government to fully transition to civilian rule,2 and protests against the administration have become a recurring feature of Nigerien politics.
In addition to internal political tensions, the elections will take place amid widespread regional insecurity. Niger faces persistent threats from foreign-based jihadist groups, including Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and Boko Haram.3 Although prior commentary noted that “…[jihadist] groups are unlikely to make further inroads into Nigerien territory,” 4 Boko Haram claimed responsibility for an attack in the Diffa region that killed at least 27 people, one day before the local government elections in early December.5 Nonetheless, international partners see Niger as a key geopolitical partner in the fight against violent extremism in the Sahel region, where Niger has remained a beacon of relative stability.
President Mamadou Tandja had refused to step down after two terms, as stipulated in the country's constitution. He first took office in 1999 and was re-elected in 2004. Instead of obeying the constitution, he then went on to dissolve parliament and the constitutional court, simultaneously organizing a referendum on the possibility of a third term for himself. But he had not expected the reaction of the civil society and the Nigerien opposition, who boycotted the referendum and parliamentary elections and denounced Tandja's actions as illegal. In the end, the military intervened and ousted Tandja.
President Issoufou Mahamadou won a second term in 2016. He won 92 percent of the vote in a second round boycotted by the opposition. The African Union certified the election as free and fair despite the criticism of some domestic observers who noted the jailing of the leadership of the lead opposition party among other irregularities. The government replaced regionally elected political leadership accused of corruption with political appointments. Early in the year, the political opposition boycotted a political mediation council and the National Independent Electoral Commission (CENI). At the end of 2019, the government and CENI were hosting tentative, informal election-related discussions.
Significant human rights issues included: reports of unlawful killings and forced disappearances by the government, allied militias, terrorists, and armed groups; arbitrary arrest and detention by government security forces and armed groups; harsh and life-threatening prison and detention center conditions; political prisoners; interference with the rights of peaceful assembly and freedom of association; lack of accountability for cases of violence against women and girls due in part to government inaction; and caste-based slavery and forced labor, including forced or child labor.
A new electoral law passed in 2017 was rejected by the opposition and some ruling majority members for centralizing election authority within the ruling party. The law created the first permanent CENI but defined its voting board in a way that left it strongly dominated by the ruling coalition. Small parties from both the opposition and the ruling party coalitions objected to new limitations on the ability of small parties to participate in election planning. As a result, the opposition boycotted CENI, raising concerns about the legitimacy of election planning and inclusivity of the process for both the anticipated local elections and the first round of the national elections, both of which were to take place in December 2020.
The 2017 Electoral Law required the creation of biometric voter lists for all future elections. Because only approximately 20 percent of citizens have birth documents, observers noted creating a biometric voter list would be challenging. The Ministry of Interior began organizing workshops where witnesses could declare birth information before a judge, resulting in identity documents that could be used to build a biometric voter list. The Ministry of Interior began enrolling eligible voters within the new biometric voter system in August. Opposition parties and civil society groups criticized these efforts, noting that ruling party control of the process might bias the selection of communities or regions for enrollment workshops.
On November 13, the Constitutional Court published a list of 30 validated presidential candidates. Prominent among these are Mohamed Bazoum, President Issoufou’s minister of the interior and favored successor; Seyni Oumarou, former prime minister and current high representative of the president; Mahamane Ousmane, former president in Niger’s first democratic election in 1993; and, Salou Djibo, who led the 2010 military coup.
Opposition leader Hama Amadou returned from exile on 14 November 2019. He was found guilty in absentia of baby trafficking (a type of adoption fraud) by a Niamey court in 2017, given a one-year prison term, and banned from running for public office. After being allowed to mourn the death of his mother, he voluntarily reported to prison to serve the remaining eight months of his sentence. Critics alleged the case was politically motivated to prevent Hama Amadou from challenging President Issoufou or the ruling party in any future elections.
Incumbent President Mahamadou Issoufou, 68, will not contest that election because his two terms are up. First elected in 2011 and then again in 2016, Issoufou has won praise for his decision to step aside for a successor, unlike other presidents – including in West Africa – who have pushed through constitutional changes in order to extend their presidencies.
Nigerien voters cast ballots in municipal and regional elections 12 December 2020, the day after an attack by the Boko Haram armed group killed dozens of people, according to local officials. A senior local official said that the attack left 27 dead and was of “unprecedented savagery”, with dozens of assailants laying to waste 60 percent of the town of Toumour, burning down up to 1,000 homes and the central market. An official of the Bosso region that includes Toumour said the elections did not go ahead there. The vote had been postponed repeatedly because of attacks in many parts of the country.
The governing Nigerien Party for Democracy and Socialism (PNDS) was the overwhelming favorite in the elections, held two weeks before a landmark presidential vote. Provisional results of the legislative election showed the ruling Nigerien Party for Democracy and Socialism leading with 80 seats. The main opposition MODEN/FA-Lumana was second with 19 seats in the 171-seat house.
The PNDS’ presidential candidate, 60-year-old Mohamed Bazoum, was the runaway frontrunner in the December 27 ballot, which should mark the first peaceful transfer of power in the country. Bazoum, a former interior and foreign minister under Issoufou, was among 30 candidates in the race.
Niger's ruling party candidate Mohamed Bazoum led the first round with 39.33% of the vote, falling short of the 50% needed to win outright in the first round. Former president Mahamane Bazoum Ousmane received 17% of the vote. The two would face off in a presidential election runoff on 21 February 2021 after the results of the first round have been validated by the constitutional court which will hear any appeals.
President Mahamadou Issoufou was stepping down after two five-year terms, which qas expected to lead to Niger's first transfer of power between two democratically elected presidents.
Niger's ruling party candidate Mohamed Bazoum won the presidential election with 55.75 percent of the vote, beating former President Mahamane Ousmane. Opposition candidate Ousmane picked up 44.25 percent, Issaka Souna, chairman of Niger's Independent National Electoral Commission (CENI), said in an announcement 23 February 2021 attended by senior officials and members of the diplomatic corps. After winning the first round in December by 22 points over Ousmane, Bazoum was endorsed by the third and fourth-place candidates in the runoff. The vote marked the first transition in the Sahel nation from one democratically elected leader to another following Niger's President Mahamadou Issoufou's decision to step down after serving two five-year terms.
The incoming president would inherit several challenges, including rising violence from Islamist militants linked to al Qaeda and Islamic State. Attacks near the western border with Mali and Burkina Faso and the southeastern border with Nigeria killed hundreds of people in 2020. Niger’s twin security crises - one near its western border with Mali and Burkina Faso, where militants linked to al Qaeda and Islamic State operate, and the other along the southeastern border with Nigeria, where Boko Haram was active - were the dominant campaign issues.
Niger - Coup Attempt - 30-31 March 2021
Niger has a history of military strongmen seizing power by force since its independence from France in 1960. A military unit tried to seize the presidential palace in Niger's capital Niamey overnight in an attempted coup but it was pushed back and order has been restored, the government said on 31 March 2021, days before a handover of power. "On the night of March 30-31, an attempted coup was thwarted," it said in a statement, condemning "this cowardly and regressive act which sought to threaten democracy and the state of law".
The assailants, from a nearby air base, fled after the presidential guard met their attack with heavy shelling and gunfire, three security sources told Reuters, requesting anonymity because they were not authorised to speak to media. Government spokesman Abdourahamane Zakaria said several people had been arrested while others were still being sought, but that the situation was under control.
The sources did not comment on the whereabouts of president-elect Mohamed Bazoum, who is due to be sworn in on Friday after an election victory disputed by his opponent Mahamane Ousmane. President Mahamadou Issoufou is stepping down after two five-year terms. The president's office shared photos on Twitter of Issoufou presiding over the swearing-in ceremony of two new members of the constitutional court.
There have been growing attacks in Niger by Islamist militants, and political tensions in the country following Bazoum's victory in a February presidential election runoff. Former president Mahamane Ousmane, who lost in the runoff, has rejected the results and said there was fraud. "There were some arrests among a few members of the army who are behind this attempted coup. The presidential guard retaliated, preventing this group of soldiers from approaching the presidential palace," a security source told AFP.
Witnesses in Niamey said the heavy gunfire lasted between 15 to 20 minutes. "It was around 3am, we heard shots from heavy and light weapons and it lasted 15 minutes before stopping, followed by shots from light weapons," one resident of Niamey's Plateau district, which includes the president's official residence and offices, told AFP. A third resident spoke of "intense shooting, with heavy and light weapons".
Online newspaper actuniger.com reported that calm had returned by around 4am. In short video clips posted on social networks, only several seconds in length, sporadic bursts of gunfire could be heard in the pitch dark. No official source was immediately available to comment.
Former US envoy to the Sahel, J. Peter Pham tweeted that both the president and president-elect were safe. The French embassy urged French nationals in Niger to stay home and the US embassy said it was suspending consular services until further notice and advised its employees not to come to work.
The gunfire came just two days before new President Mohamed Bazoum's inauguration and as Niger faces unprecedented attacks from Islamic extremists near its troubled border with Mali. Just over a week earlier, gunmen on motorcycles attacked a series of villages in the volatile border region, leaving at least 137 people dead in the deadliest violence to strike Niger in recent memory. Those attacks came on the same day that the constitutional court certified Bazoum's electoral victory. In January 2021, at least 100 people were killed in villages, the same day that Niger announced the presidential election would go to a second round on February 21.
One of the poorest countries in the world, Niger has suffered numerous coups in its history, most recently a February 2010 putsch that toppled then-president Mamadou Tandja. The Sahel country had also been struck by repeated jihadist attacks as Islamist movements have spilled over from neighbouring Mali and Nigeria.
More than 300 people have been killed in three attacks in the west since the start of the year. In the most recent of these, 141 members of the Tuareg community were massacred on March 21 in Tahoua, a vast desert region abutting Mali. Bazoum ruled out any talks with the insurgents.
Niger's armed forces are poorly equipped and trained, and number just 25,000 in a country twice the size of Texas. The plan is to double this to 50,000 men within five years, but funding was key. France is operating in the Sahel, particularly in the dangerous three-border zone between Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso. The Barkhane force has been operating across five Sahel countries – Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger – since intervening to fend off a jihadist advance in Mali in 2013. Yet the force has been struggling to contain the escalating violence.
Bazoum said in March 2021 France’s anti-jihadist force in West Africa was a “relative failure” and warned that a partial troop drawdown would have only a limited impact. “We would have liked, as part of the cooperation framework with the French army, to have had better results than we have,” said Bazoum. “This relative failure, it’s a shared failure, a failure of the entire coalition."
In 2020, violent protests broke out over a military procurement scandal officially estimated to have cost nearly 32.6 billion CFA francs (€49.7 million).
Niger - President Mohamed Bazoum
President of the Republic of Niger since April 2, 2021, before becoming President, Mohamed Bazoum served as the President of the Nigerien Party for Democracy and Socialism. Mohamed Bazoum was born in 1960 in Bilabrine near N'Gourti in the Diffa region. He is married to Hadiza Mabrouk and is the father of four children.
A philosopher by training, from 1979 to 1984 he was at the faculty of letters and human sciences in the philosophy department of the University of Dakar before obtaining a master's degree in political and moral philosophy and then a diploma in studies (DEA), logic and epistemology option.
After student life, he joined the trade union activities of the National Union of Teachers of Niger (SNEN) then joined the executive office of the Trade Union of Workers of Niger (USTN) which he moreover represented at the National Conference in 1991.
He has held several ministerial posts, notably that of Minister of the Interior from April 2016 to June 2020 and Minister of State and Minister of Foreign Affairs for Cooperation from 2011 to 2015. He was also elected four times as a deputy (1993 , 2004, 2011 and 2016) from the special constituency of Tesker (Zinder) and several times Vice-President of the National Assembly and President of the PNDS-Tarayya parliamentary group.
Mohamed Bazoum was also a member of the transitional parliament from 2010 to 2011 and secretary of state to the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation in charge of cooperation from 1991 to 1993 during the post-national conference democratic transition.
The presidential elections were held on 27 December 2020. President Mahamadou Issoufou did not stand for re-election, respecting the constitutional rule of two terms. His party's candidate, Mohamed Bazoum, is the favorite according to most polls. The election campaign has been marked by the decisions of the Constitutional Court, which had rejected the candidacy of the main opposition leader and validated the candidacy of the ruling party. Both decisions have been questioned.
The questioning of the validity of his candidacy is due to doubts about his nationality. Article 47 of the Constitution states that Nigerian nationality is required to become President. The Constitutional Court ruled that doubts about Bazoum's nationality were unfounded and therefore there was no problem with his eligibility.
Niger's recent political history is marked by four coups d'état, the last one in 2010. The other candidates who are also running include General Salou Djibo, who was the head of the military junta and was in power after the 2010 coup d'état until the elections won by the current president; Mahamane Ousmane, who was president of Niger from 1993 to 1996, and Seïni Oumarou, leader of the National Movement for the Society of Development (MNSD), who came third in the 2016 elections, among others.
Mohamed Bazoum was an important western ally in the fight against a spreading jihadist insurgency in the Sahel region and had also co-operated with the EU in stemming the flow of people who use Niger as a transit country on their journey towards Europe. Agadez, the trading metropolis on the southern edge of the Sahara, according to Olaf Bernau "provided services for the more than 100,000 transit migrants each year, i.e. transport, accommodation or food. A total of around 9,000 people are said to have lost their livelihoods, some even ended up in prison."
Niger - Coup Attempt - 26 July 2021
Landlocked Niger is one of the poorest and most unstable countries in the world. Niger finished third from bottom on the UN Human Development Index. President Mohamed Bazoum, 63, is one of a dwindling group of pro-Western leaders in the Sahel region, where a rampaging jihadist insurgency has triggered coups against elected presidents in Mali and Burkina Faso. Bazoum, a former interior minister, was right-hand man to former president Mahamadou Issoufou, who voluntarily stepped down after two terms. Their handover in April 2021, after elections won by Bazoum in a two-round contest against former president Mahamane Ousmane, marked Niger's first peaceful transition of power since independence.
In Mali and Burkina Faso, the transitional governments that emerged from several military coups were seeking closer ties with Russia's Wagner Group, In Niger, tere were complaints about the abuse of power, corruption and impunity, above all the behavior of the former colonial power France.
The official social media account of Niger’s presidency posted: "The President of the Republic and his family are well," adding that the presidential guards (GP) had failed to secure support from the other elements of the security services in this "fit of pique". Bazoum, in a social media posting on 27 July 2023 morning, vowed to protect "hard-won" democratic gains in a country that is a pivotal ally for Western powers helping to fight an insurgency in the Sahel region. Niamey was quiet on 27 July 2023 as citizens awoke to heavy rain, closed borders and a nationwide curfew imposed by the coup instigators.
Olaf Bernau reported that "The presidency of Mahamadou Issoufou between 2011 and 2021 appears to have been particularly disastrous . According to Abari, the mining engineer, who comes from the political left, came into office with a lot of advance praise. Everyone would have expected a decisive fight against corruption. But the already blatant corruption escalated from day one. Issoufou rigorously persecuted political opponents, including former comrades-in-arms, and had unwelcome mayors removed, for example in Niamey, Bilma and Diffa."
Niger is a multiparty republic. In February 2021 Mohamed Bazoum won the presidential election with an estimated 56 percent of the vote in the second round of voting. He assumed office the following April in the first peaceful transfer of power in the country’s history, although the office stayed within the ruling party. International and domestic observers considered both rounds of the presidential election to be peaceful, free, fair, transparent, and inclusive. In 2020 legislative elections, conducted in tandem with the first round of presidential elections, the ruling party won 79 of 171 seats, with 127 seats for the ruling coalition, and opposition parties dividing the remainder. International and local observers found the legislative elections peaceful, free, fair, transparent, and inclusive.
Members of the Presidential Guard detained Bazoum inside his palace in the capital, Niamey, early on 26 July 2021. In a statement broadcasted later on national television, Colonel-Major Amadou Abdramane, spokesperson for a group calling itself the National Council for the Safeguarding of the Country, said that “the defence and security forces … have decided to put an end to the regime you are familiar with”. He added “This follows the continuous deterioration of the security situation, the bad social and economic management”. The soldier said the country’s borders have been closed, and a nationwide curfew was in place. All institutions of the country were also suspended, Abdramane added. He was seated and flanked by nine other officers wearing fatigues as he read out his statement.
Niger's army command on 27 July 2023 declared its support for a coup instigated the previous day by soldiers of the presidential guard, saying its priority was to avoid destabilising the country.
"The Military Command of the Niger Armed Forces composed of the Chief of Staff of the Armies and the Chiefs of Staff of the Armies, following a meeting held on July 26, 2023 and motivated, on the one hand, out of a concern to preserve the physical integrity of the President of the Republic and his family, to avoid a deadly confrontation between the various Forces which, beyond the latter, could cause a bloodbath and tarnish the safety of the population and on the other hand, for the sake of preserving cohesion within the Defense and Security Forces, have decided to subscribe to the declaration of the Defense and Security Forces.
"Any external military intervention, from whatever source, would risk having disastrous and uncontrollable consequences for our populations and chaos for our country.
"The General Staff also recalls that our country is still plagued by the insecurity imposed by the Terrorist Armed Groups and other Organized Crime Groups. Consequently, he invites all the FDS to remain focused on their missions and to maintain their well-known combativeness for the pursuit of the fight against terrorism and organized crime, for the ultimate objective which is the well-being of our populations."
The soldiers said in a late-night televised address that Bazoum had been stripped of power and the republic's institutions had been suspended, marking the seventh coup in West and Central Africa since 2020. They earlier cut off the presidential palace in the capital Niamey with the president inside. A number of Western officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters there was no evidence on the ground that the armed forces supported it.
Bazoum was elected president of Niger in 2021, taking the helm of a country mired in poverty and burdened by a history of chronic instability. His election was Niger’s first democratic transition of power following four military coups since the country gained independence from France in 1960. A military unit tried to seize the presidential palace in March 2021 days before Bazoum was due to be sworn in, but the attempted coup was thwarted.
A military takeover in Niger could further complicate Western efforts to help countries in the Sahel region fight a jihadist insurgency that has spread from Mali over the past decade. Niger has become a pivotal ally for Western powers seeking to help fight the insurgency but facing growing acrimony from the new juntas in charge in Mali and Burkina Faso. It is also a key European Union ally in the fight against irregular migration from sub-Saharan Africa. The United States says it has spent around $500 million since 2012 to help Niger boost its security. Germany announced in April that it would take part in a three-year European military mission aimed at improving the country's military.
The African Union and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) on 26 July 2023 condemned an “attempted coup d'état" in Niger and called for President Mohamed Bazoum to be liberated amid reports that members of the presidential guard were holding him inside his palace. In a statement posted on social media, Chairman Moussa Faki Mahamat of the African Union Commission expressed his strong condemnation in reaction to reports that members of Niger's presidential guard had detained President Mohamed Bazoum inside the palace. "Informed of an attempt by certain members of the military to undermine the stability of democratic and republican institutions in Niger, which is tantamount to an attempted coup d'état, [Faki] strongly condemns such actions by members of the military," he said, adding that they amount to a “total betrayal” of duty.
ECOWAS and its member countries are monitoring the situation in Niger and will do everything within their power to protect its democracy, Chairman Bola Tinubu said in a message posted on the X social network formerly known as Twitter. "The ECOWAS leadership will not accept any action that impedes the smooth functioning of legitimate authority in Niger or any part of West Africa," said Tinubu, who is also Nigeria’s president.
The president of neighbouring Benin, Patrice Talon, said he was on his way to Niger to assess the situation after meeting with ECOWAS chairman Tinubu. "All means will be used, if necessary, to restore constitutional order in Niger, but the ideal would be for everything to be done in peace and harmony," Talon told reporters in Abuja.
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borell said he was "very concerned about current events in Niamey", adding Brussels' condemnation of any "attempts to destabilise the democracy and threaten the stability of Niger".
A statement from France’s foreign ministry said Paris “strongly condemns any attempt to seize power by force” in Niger, adding that France is "concerned" and is "closely following the development of the situation".
UN chief Antonio Guterres also condemned "any effort to seize power by force". A UN spokesman said that Guterres later spoke with Bazoum and expressed "his full support and solidarity".
The White House issued a statement calling for Bazoum’s release. "The United States is deeply concerned about today's developments in Niger," the White House said. "We specifically urge elements of the presidential guard to release President Bazoum from detention and refrain from violence."
https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2022/5/9/analysis-can-niger-become-the-main-western-ally-in-the-sahel
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