Did you miss the latest events on the conflict in Niger? 20 Minutes takes stock for you every evening at 8 p.m. Who did what ? Who said what? Where are we ? The answer below.
The fact of the day
A delegation from the junta in Niger was received in Conakry, the Guinean capital, by the Guinean military authorities, to whom it asked for “reinforced support to face the challenges to come”, while the military regime in Niamey is under threat from a West African intervention, Guinean public television reported. The Guinean head of state, Colonel Mamadi Doumbouya, whose regime also emerged from a coup in September 2021, met on Saturday in Conakry with this delegation led by General Moussa Salaou Barmou, reported on Saturday evening on Guinean television.
sentence of the day
We cannot fail to see that a major terrorist hotbed is once again just a stone’s throw from the shores of the Mediterranean. »
The holidays do not prevent the Minister of the Armed Forces, Sébastien Lecornu, from remaining on the alert. In an interview at Var Morning, he believes that the recent coups in Africa have weakened the fight against terrorism in the Sahel. “When the junta staged a coup in Mali, it stopped fighting terrorism. Today, 40% of Malian territory is handed over to armed terrorist groups who threaten to reconstitute a form of caliphate,” he explains. “The situation is also fragile in Burkina Faso. In Niger, “the subject is therefore not only a subject of influence, but of collective security”, he justifies.
The number of the day
18. The democratically elected president Mohamed Bazoum has been kidnapped for 18 days by the putschists. If he was able to express himself in the media during this detention, in particular in a tribune of the washington post, his state of health worries the international community. His doctor was able to visit him yesterday, as well as his wife and son, detained with him.
The trend of the day
The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) is still procrastinating. While the African alliance ordered the deployment of a “standby force” on Friday, which is not unanimous, a religious delegation arrived on Saturday evening to try to reason with the putschists, with the agreement of the President of Nigeria . This delegation of religious leaders is led by Sheikh Bala Lau, the leader of Izala, a Salafist-inspired Islamic movement in Nigeria.
Its objective is “to ease the tensions created by the prospect of a military intervention by ECOWAS”, according to this source. “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.