By Ayo Yusuf
Hopes that the coup plotters of Niger Republic would restate deposed President Mohamed Bazoum as demanded by the Economic Community of West African States, ECOWAS, was further dimmed Thursday when the junta announced the formation of a new government.
According to a decree read out on the nations television on Thursday, a former economy minister Ali Mahaman Lamine Zeine will head the 21 member cabinet as Prime Minister.
Generals from the new military governing council will head the defence and interior ministries in a transitional government formed two weeks after General Abdourahamane Tchiani seized power in a military coup.
Mr. Tchiani signed the decree on Wednesday and although a large proportion of the members of the new government were civilians a small number were members of the military.
Prime minister Lamine Zeine was formerly the minister of economy and finance for several years in the cabinet of then-president Mamadou Tandja, who was ousted in 2010, and most recently worked as an economist for the African Development Bank in Chad, according to a Nigerien media report.
It would be recalled that at the end of July, the military had ousted the democratically elected president of Niger, Mohamed Bazoum and suspended the constitution in the country of 26 million inhabitants.
Under Bazoum, Niger had been one of the last strategic partners of the West in the fight against the advance of Islamist terrorists in the Sahel.
On July 30, the Economic Community of West African States, ECOWAS, suspended all financial aid to the country and froze rebels’ assets.
The sub-regional bloc also imposed a ban on commercial flights to and from the country and closed all borders.
ECOWAS moved further and gave the coup leaders one week within which to reinstate Bazoum and restore order, hinting that it would resort to military intervention otherwise.
An ultimatum from the Economic Community of West African States to the coup plotters to reinstate Bazoum expired over the weekend.
ECOWAS had threatened to take measures that could include force, at the end of the ultimatum.
The prime ministers of the ECOWAS member states will now meet in Nigeria’s capital Abuja on Thursday to discuss how to proceed.
