UPDATE: Niger’s coup succeeds, as military announces President Bazoum sacked

By BASHIR ADEFAKA and OUR REPORTER, Abuja with agency reports

There is new order in the Republic of Niger, as plotters of yesterday’s coup in Niamey, the Francophone country’s capital, announced last night that the West African nation’s President Mohamed Bazoum has been removed from power.

The sack of President Bazoum came hours after soldiers sealed off President Bazoum office and residence in the presidential palace during which our reporter had gathered yesterday that discussion was ongoing between the mutineers and the president.

It will recalled that The DEFENDER’s effort to get details of situation in the country through its Embassy in Abuja proved abortive, sensing that the centre was no longer holding for the civilian administration in Niamey.

We can comfortably report that the coup is now a success because, following yhe announcement of his ouster from power, Bazoum did not issue any comment to the contrary.

Earlier Wednesday, the coup in Niamey was said to been botched as Bazoum’s official Twitter account put out a statement saying the president and his family were doing well.

Media report, banking on report of the Niger’s fresh coup as a failed one, said there had also been a thwarted coup attempt in the country in March 2021, when a military unit tried to seize the presidential palace, days before Bazoum was due to be sworn in.

But the newest coup plotters, who said in a brief appearance on television that the country’s institutions were suspended, last night assured that their action was succesful with Col.Amadou Abdramane and his boys now in charge of power in Niamey, closing borders and warning against any interferance.

Reacting to the March 2021 coup, the sitting power in Nigeria at the time, President Muhammadu Buhari, had described the attempted coup as “utterly naïve, despicable, and unacceptable”.

Buhari urged African leaders at the time to “remain united against coups under whatever guise or form”, and warned “coup plotters to learn from history on the consequences of instability caused by violent takeover of governments.”

Nonetheless, 58 days after Buhari had left power in Abuja, the mutineers in Niamey struck on Wednesday July 26, 2023 and have now successfully installed a military administration without resistance.

The plotters may have allowed Buhari, a strong and very highly respected retired Army General, to leave power before they struck so as to make him helpless in providing support to stop the coup, an unnamed pro-democracy activist said, adding that “What the man on seat can do about this remains in the expectation of observers.”