Foreign
West Africa threatens force on Niger coup leaders, French embassy attacked
West African nations imposed sanctions and threatened force on Sunday if Niger’s coup leaders fail to reinstate ousted President Mohammed Bazoum within a week, while supporters of the junta attacked the French embassy in Niamey.
The 15-nation ECOWAS bloc’s response to the Sahel region’s seventh coup of recent years came as crowds in Niger’s capital Niamey burned French flags and stoned the former colonial power’s mission, drawing tear gas from police.
Images showed fires at the embassy walls and people being loaded into ambulances with bloodied legs.
At an emergency summit in Nigeria to discuss last week’s coup, leaders of the Economic Community of West African States called for constitutional order to be restored, warning of reprisals if not.
“Such measures may include the use of force,” their communique said, adding that defence officials would meet immediately to that effect.
Chad’s President Mahamat Idriss Deby, who came to power in 2021 after a coup, met his Nigerian counterpart Bola Tinubu on the sidelines of the summit and volunteered to speak to the military leaders in Niger, two presidential aides told Reuters, asking not to be identified.
Niger’s state TV showed Deby arriving and meeting them.
ECOWAS and the eight-member West African Economic and Monetary Union said that with immediate effect borders with Niger would be closed, commercial flights banned, financial transactions halted, national assets frozen, and aid ended.
Military officials involved in the coup would be banned from travelling and have their assets frozen, it added.
Niger’s prime minister under Bazoum’s government, Ouhoumoudou Mahamadou, said ECOWAS sanctions would be disastrous because the country relies heavily on international partners to cover its budgetary needs.
“I know the fragility of Niger, I know the economic and financial context of Niger having been the finance minister and now prime minister,” Mahamadou, who was abroad when the coup occurred, told France24 television from Paris.
“This is a country that will not be able to resist these kinds of sanctions. It will be catastrophic,” he added.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken welcomed ECOWAS’s action on Sunday.
“We join ECOWAS and regional leaders in calling for the immediate release of President Mohamed Bazoum and his family and the restoration of all state functions to the legitimate, democratically-elected government,” said Blinken in a statement.
Similar sanctions were imposed by ECOWAS on Mali, Burkina Faso, and Guinea following coups in those countries in the past three years.
Although the financial sanctions led to defaults on debt – in Mali in particular – such measures have tended to hurt civilians more than the military leaders who seized power in some of the world’s poorest countries, political analysts say.
Timelines to restore civilian rule have been agreed in all three countries, but there has been little progress implementing them.
The military coup in Niger, which began unfolding on Wednesday, has been widely condemned by neighbours and international partners including the United States, the United Nations, the African Union, the European Union, and former colonial power France.
They have all refused to recognise the new leaders led by Gen. Abdourahamane Tiani.
Niger has been a key ally in Western campaigns against insurgents linked to al Qaeda and Islamic State in the Sahel, and there are concerns that the coup could open the door to greater Russian influence there.
Thousands of French troops were forced to withdraw from neighbouring Mali and Burkina Faso following coups there.
Niger is one of the poorest countries in the world, receiving close to $2 billion a year in official development assistance, according to the World Bank.
The junta in Burkina Faso, which toppled a military regime to gain power, has announced that there was a coup attempt.
In a statement, the junta said an attempt by some army officers to seize power and plunge the country into chaos was thwarted.
“The dark intention of attacking the institutions of the Republic and plunging our country in chaos… investigations will help unmask the instigators of this plot.”
“Officers and other alleged actors involved in this attempt at destabilisation have been arrested and others are actively sought,” read the statement from Rimtalba Jean Emmanuel Ouedraogo, spokesman for the regime.
The military government said it would seek to shed all possible light on this plot, adding that it regretted “that officers whose oath is to defend their homeland have strayed into an undertaking of this nature”.
It said while four people had been detained, two were on the run.
The statement added that the regime launched investigation based on “credible allegations about a plot against state security implicating officers.”
“We regret that officers whose oath is to defend their homeland have strayed into an undertaking of this nature, which aims to hinder the Burkinabe people’s march for sovereignty and total liberation from the terrorist hordes trying to enslave them.”
The junta came to power after two military coups last year, triggered in part by a worsening insurgency by armed groups linked to al Qaeda and Islamic State that has destabilised Burkina Faso and its neighbours.
Captain Ibrahim Traoré, the junta leader, seized power on September 30, 2022, the country’s second coup in eight months.
From 2020 till date, there have been seven coups across Africa.
No fewer than 3,567 jobs were lost in the manufacturing sector in the first half of 2023 according to figures obtained by The PUNCH from the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria.
MAN disclosed this in its half yearly review of the economy, which was released on Tuesday.
According to the report, employment generation in the manufacturing sector declined to 6,428 in the first half of 2023.
This was 32.8 per cent reduction in employment generation capacity when compared with 9,559 jobs generated in the first half of 2022.
The report read partly, “In the same vein, a total of 3,567 jobs were lost in the first half of 2023, indicating 1,855 more jobs lost when compared with the 1,709 jobs lost in the corresponding half of 2022, and 850 more jobs lost when compared with 2708 jobs lost in the last half of 2022.”
MAN said the decline in the number of jobs created in the sector during the period further highlighted the unfriendly business environment, resulting from the hasty policies and residual effect of the currency redesign policy that led to the naira crunch.
The report also stated that the inventory of unsold finished products in the manufacturing sector increased to N271.9bn during the first half of 2023, compared to N187bn in the corresponding period of 2022.
This indicated a substantial rise of N84.88bn or 45.4 per cent over the timeframe. It also showed N11.64bn or 4.1 per cent decline when compared with the inventory value of N283.6bn recorded in the second half of 2022.
“This increase in inventory can be attributed to a weakened purchasing power of the consumers, brought about by diminishing real household income resulting from the ongoing escalation of inflationary pressures, compounded by the scarcity of naira in the first quarter of the year and the aftermath of the subsidy removal,” the report said.
It noted that subsidy removal and exchange rate unification policy towards the end of the first half left the economy on the brink of uncertainty, caused a ripple effect that further eroded investors’ confidence.
MAN stated that, “As a result, businesses and foreign investors are increasingly wary of committing capital, thereby hindering economic growth and prospects for recovery.
“The combined effect of these is the resultant higher inflationary pressure, which fuels the cost of production, reducing consumers’ purchasing power and having a greater impact on the manufacturers.”
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