Niger junta’s 3-year transition plan is a ‘provocation,’ says ECOWAS

The West African bloc ECOWAS rejected the proposal by Niger’s mutinous soldiers for a three-year transition to democratic rule, with a commissioner describing the slow timeline as a provocation.
The door for diplomacy with Niger’s junta remained open but the bloc is not going to engage in drawn-out talks that lead nowhere, Abdel-Fatau Musah, the ECOWAS commissioner for peace and security, said in an interview Wednesday.
“It is the belief among the ECOWAS heads of state and also the commission that the coup in Niger is one coup too many for the region and if we allow it then we are going to have a domino effect in the region and we are determined to stop it,” Musah said. While direct talks and backchannel negotiations are ongoing, he said the door to diplomacy wasn’t open indefinitely.
“We are not going to engage in long, drawn out haggling with these military officers … We went down that route in Mali, in Burkina Faso and elsewhere, and we are getting nowhere,” Musah said.
His comments came days after an ECOWAS delegation met the head of Niger’s military regime, Gen. Abdourahmane Tchiani, for the first time since the mutinous soldiers ousted President Mohamed Bazoum in July. After last week’s meetng, Musah said the ball is now in the junta’s court. The junta has been keeping Bazoum and his wife and son under house arrest, and ECOWAS has demanded Bazoum be freed and constitutional order restored.
ECOWAS has used Niger as a red line against further coups after several in the region, including two each in Mali and Burkina Faso since 2020. The bloc has imposed severe economic and travel sanctions and threatened the use of military force if Bazoum is not reinstated, but the junta has dug in. It has appointed a new government and said it will return the country to democratic rule within several years.
Niger was seen as one of the last democratic countries in the Sahel region below the Sahara Desert that Western nations could partner with to beat back a growing jihadi insurgency linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State group.