West African Leaders Threaten Force Against Niger Plotters

West African leaders said that they would consider a military intervention to oust coup plotters in Niger and restore democratic rule in a vast Saharan country that they worry could become Russia’s newest security partner in the region.

At an emergency summit in the Nigerian capital of Abuja on Sunday, leaders from the Economic Community of West African States said Niger’s new military junta had one week to return the country’s elected president, Mohamed Bazoum, to power. The regional group, called Ecowas, also laid out banking and economic sanctions to squeeze the military junta, which on Wednesday detained Bazoum and his family and suspended the country’s constitution.

“In the event the authorities’ demands are not met within one week [Ecowas will] take all measures necessary to restore constitutional order in the Republic of Niger,” Omar Alieu Touray, the president of the Ecowas commission, said after the meeting. “Such measures may include the use of force.”

Earlier in the day, thousands of protesters in the Niger capital of Niamey marched to the embassy of France—the country’s former colonial ruler—waving Russian flags, throwing stones and lighting a fire. “FRANCE LEAVE,” read several of the crowd’s homemade placards. The French military keeps about 1,500 troops in Niger, part of a yearslong campaign against Islamist insurgents in an expansive desert country about twice the size of France itself.

The threat of several West African countries intervening with military force in Niger presents an escalation after years of coups that have brought Russian-friendly governments to power in several other nations in the region.

Since 2020, military leaders have seized power in Mali and Burkina Faso—once two of France and the U.S.’s closest counterterrorism partners in West Africa—shifting those countries’ allegiances toward Moscow. Coup leaders have benefited from local frustration that Western militaries, which once parked thousands of troops in the two countries, failed to defeat jihadist insurgencies gaining ground in the region.

The coup in Niger verges on a step too far for Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country and biggest economy, which shares a 1,000-mile border with its northern neighbor. Nigeria’s war on its own internal Islamist insurgencies depends on cross-border coordination with Niger.

Washington, which has spent more than $500 million equipping and training the local military, also risks losing a partner in the region; U.S. laws restrict such aid to countries under military rule. The European Union, which has pledged more than 1.5 billion euros, equivalent to about $1.7 billion, in aid for the country since 2017, stands to lose the cooperation of a country that has helped slow the movement of asylum seekers north to Libya and on toward Italy. On Saturday, the EU said it would freeze some of its support to Niger.

Aside from threatening military force, the West African leaders announced a series of banking and trade restrictions that reflected their hope that the junta around Gen. Omar Tchiani, who earlier this week declared himself Niger’s new leader, doesn’t have the full support of the country’s military.

The new government of Nigerian President Bola Tinubu

“It is right now a big power game,” he said. “It’s between France and Russia.”

On Saturday, the spokesman for the junta, Col. Maj. Amadou Abdramane, appeared on state television, saying he wanted to remind “Ecowas, or any other adventurer, of our fierce determination to defend our homeland.”

Both the U.S. and Europe have made Niger the centerpiece of their fight against the spread of Islamic State and al Qaeda in Africa’s Sahel, the semiarid southern shore of the Sahara. The country hosts U.S. drones and U.S. commandos, who have trained Nigerien special forces, advised them during combat missions, and equipped them with everything from tents and radios to surveillance planes and armored personnel carriers.

By contrast, Mali in 2021 hired mercenaries from Russia’s Wagner group, while Burkina Faso earlier this year kicked out French troops.

French President Emmanuel Macron condemned the violence at his country’s embassy and warned France would respond “immediately and uncompromisingly” to any attack on its citizens, military, diplomats and diplomatic compounds. Immediately after the coup, other protesters in Niamey also came up in support of Bazoum, according to footage posted of his political party’s social-media accounts.

Security has been reinforced at the French embassy, the foreign ministry in Paris later said. It added France backs the sanctions imposed by Ecowas on Niger.

U.S. and European officials have accused Russia of using disinformation to foster anti-Western sentiment across the Sahel.

Beyond threatening a possible military intervention, the Nigeria-led group of 15 countries said it would immediately freeze the government’s bank accounts in the region’s central banks, and in commercial lenders. It also imposed a freeze on all energy-related transactions between Niger and its neighbors. Niger imports more than two-thirds of its electricity from Nigeria.

The country uses the same currency as seven of its West African neighbors, which keep their reserves under a Dakar, Senegal-based central bank. Those assets should be frozen immediately, Ecowas said.

The bloc would also impose a no-fly zone, and travel bans and asset freezes targeting the plotters if they don’t restore Bazoum to power, it said. The measures are similar to those imposed on Mali in 2021 after it failed to respect a plan to move the country toward democratic elections.

The banking sanctions will likely have limited impact on Niger, where the overwhelming majority of citizens are unbanked, and could backfire by allowing Russia to step in as a new patron for the country’s coup leaders, said Bismarck Rewane, managing director of Lagos research firm Financial Derivatives Co.

“It will have an impact ostracizing them, but it doesn’t do that much,” he said. “It’s a nice sound bite…The big fear is what it opens up for the Russians.”

Some African nations, however, still hope the standoff in Niger could end peacefully.

Mahamat Deby, the transitional president of Chad, met Salifou Modi, one of the Niger junta leaders, in Niamey on Sunday, in an attempt to resolve the crisis, said Chad’s information minister, Aziz Mahamat Saleh. The Chadian official said the visit followed consultations with Nigeria.

Bazoum has refused to step down or leave his residence, where he has been held hostage for five days by the coup plotters. “He is serene and says he had no intention to resign,” says Ange Barou Chekaraou, a leader in Bazoum’s Nigerien Party for Democracy and Socialism, who has spoken to him by phone.

—Gbenga Akingbule and Noemie Bisserbe contributed to this article.

Write to Drew Hinshaw at [email protected] and Benoit Faucon at [email protected]