Last chance mission for peace. A delegation of Nigerian religious leaders arrived in Niamey on Saturday to meet with officials of the military junta in Niger. The religious leaders were received at Diori Hamani airport by the newly appointed civilian Prime Minister, Ali Mahaman Lamine Zeine, according to the Nigerian News Agency (ANP). This delegation of religious leaders is led by Sheikh Bala Lau, the leader of Izala, a Salafist-inspired Islamic movement in Nigeria.
A source close to the delegation confirmed to AFP this “mediation mission” carried out with the agreement of the President of Nigeria Bola Tinubu, also current president of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). . Its objective is “to ease the tensions created by the prospect of a military intervention by ECOWAS”, according to this source.
A “standby force” deployed
Earlier this week, Bala Lau and other religious leaders met Bola Tinubu at the presidential palace in Nigeria’s capital Abuja, where the mission was discussed. “The clerics are in Niamey to explain to the leaders of the junta that Nigeria is not fighting Niger and that the decisions taken about Niger are not those of Nigeria but those of ECOWAS as a regional bloc,” said the source close to the delegation.
This mediation comes two days after an extraordinary ECOWAS summit, where the leaders said they favored a resolution of the crisis through diplomatic channels, while ordering the deployment of a “standby force” as a last resort to restore President Mohamed Bazoum in his functions. Previous attempts at mediation came to nothing. The military regime in Niger refused on Tuesday to welcome a joint delegation from ECOWAS, the African Union (AU) and the UN.
In Nigeria, the voices of parliamentarians and political leaders are rising as far as the Senate, asking President Bola Tinubu to reconsider a possible military intervention by ECOWAS in Niger against the perpetrators of the coup. Northern Nigeria has historical commercial and social ties with Niger, with which it shares cultural, religious and linguistic affinities.