Niger's Foreign Ministry Summoned European Envoy to Protest 'Interference in Its Internal Affairs'

Within hours after the European Parliament adopted a resolution demanding the "immediate and unconditional release" of Niger's ousted, France-backed former president Mohamed Bazoum, the Nigerien government reiterated that it "will not accept any directive" from Europe.

Denouncing the "paternalistic and condescending attitude" of the European Union (EU), Niger has handed an official letter of protest to Nicoletta Avella, the EU's chargé d'affaires ad interim in Niger, on March 12.

Avella was summoned to the office of Niger's Foreign Ministry in the capital, Niamey, within hours after the European Parliament (EP) adopted a resolution calling for the "immediate and unconditional release" of Mohamed Bazoum, who was ousted from the presidency in July 2023.

Bazoum, the resolution insisted, is "democratically elected". Such was his democratic election in 2021 that in at least one district, the voter turnout recorded was 103%, with 99% of the votes for Bazoum.

Widely perceived domestically as a puppet of Niger's former colonizer, France, Bazoum succeeded Mahamadou Issoufou, whose presidency was already facing protests against his regime's subservience to France and had unleashed a crackdown against it.

Barely six months before Bazoum was declared the winner of this "election", Ibrahim Keïta, the France-backed president in Niger's western neighbor, Mali, was ousted in a popularly supported military coup amid the mass protests demanding the expulsion of French troops from the country.

Three months after Bazoum's election, Col. Assimi Goïta consolidated power in Mali with another coup, establishing a popular military government that went on to expel the French troops.

In 2022, a similar process also unfolded in Mali's southern neighbor, Burkina Faso, where, after the ouster of Roch Marc Kaboré's regime, propped up by France, the popular military government of Captain Ibrahim Traore expelled the French troops by January 2023.

Amid this wave of anti-imperialist protests sweeping the former French neocolonies in the Sahel, Bazoum sealed his fate by inviting the French troops expelled from the neighboring countries to Niger. Tens of thousands took to the streets in the capital, Niamey, and elsewhere, to celebrate the news of the coup against Bazoum by the head of his presidential guard, General Abdourahamane Tchiani, in July 2023.

Refusing to withdraw its troops when ordered by Tchiani's government, France threatened the country with war to reinstate Bazoum to power, fronting other states of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) that remained under its neocolonial yoke.

However, in the face of domestic opposition to war within these countries, combined with the growing anti-French sentiment among their populations, the war did not materialize, especially as Mali and Burkina Faso came to Niger's defense and formed the Alliance of Sahel States (AES).

Failing to restore Bazoum with a war, France was eventually forced to withdraw its troops by December 2023.

Over two years later, Christophe Gomart, a French member of the parliament, was still nostalgic, remembering Bazoum as Europe's "main partner in the Sahel" while pushing for the EP's resolution on March 12 calling for his release.

Firmly rejecting "the EU's interference in Niger's internal affairs," Niger's Foreign Ministry summoned its representative Avella to reiterate that Niger "will not accept any directive" from France, or "wherever it comes from".

This article orignally appeared on People’s Dispatch.