By Felix Awonaiya/
The triumvirate of Tchiani, Traore and Goita are behaving like petulant children. As in dealing with all petulants, it is now time to pull their ears and apply tough love. You cannot continually overlook a child throwing his toys out of the pram anytime he is upset. The indulgence must now stop and not too soon. It appears that we are minimizing the risk the Sahel Insurgency poses to our corporate existence given the ethnic composition of the insurgents and affinities across borders. A closer cooperation with France on the Sahelian insurgency can only be of mutual interest.
The three countries Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger fell to coup plots led by ambitious officers like a pack of cards. First Mali on 24 May 2021, Burkina Faso on 30 September 2022 itself a counter coup to the one of 24 January 2022 and Niger on 26 July 2023. These coup d’etats installed Colonel Assimi Goita, Captain Ibrahim Traore and Brigadier Abdourahamane Tchiani in Niger. The Malian coup itself was sequel to an earlier coup of 18 August 2020 led by Assimi Goita that overthrew the democratically elected government of the aged and somewhat ineffectual Ibrahim Boubacar Keita. Assimi Goita had taken advantage of ongoing protests over a period of two months to launch the successful coup d’etat and became the head of the so called National Committee for the Salvation of the People (CNSP).
There were a series of intervening events heralded by much international pressure spearheaded by the African Union and ECOWAS to return the country to civilian rule. As a result of this, Bah Ndaw, a retired head of the Malian Air Force and ex Defence Minister was installed as the president by a group of 17 electors in a supposedly eighteen month transitional program with Assimi Goita as his Vice President. A civilian Prime Minister was also appointed at the behest of ECOWAS in order for sanctions imposed after the coup and the suspension from ECOWAS to be lifted. This eighteen months intervening period proved to be too long for an officer with the ambitions of Goita and on 24 May 2021 a coup was launched culminating in the resignation of the far more strategic and well meaning Ndaw on 26th May 2021.
Apparently, the ambitious Goita could only wait for eight months to finally seize power for himself. His ascent and two successful coups were no doubt facilitated by the opposition coalition Movement of June 5-Rally of Patriotic Forces so called M5-RFP coalition who it appears have traded democracy for unrealistic ideological and ethnic illusions.
The situation in Burkina Faso has been similar. An initial coup in January 2022 overthrew President Roch Marc Christian Kabore, installing the high falutin Patriotic Movement for Safeguard and Restoration (PMSR) with Paul-Henry Sandaogo Damiba, a Lt Colonel as its head as an interim president with a pledge to restore civilian rule within two years. However, his inability to stem the Jihadists progression led to him becoming quite unpopular with the civilian population and junior army officers who had started to see the solution to the insurgency in Russia, interestingly a view he had propagated himself before becoming the interim president. He was eventually overthrown on 30 September 2022 and Captain Ibrahim Traore, a frontline army officer took over the reins as President of the country and head of PMSR.
Niger’s path was not the tale of the coup and counter coup of the other two countries, it was a more straight forward situation that has often repeated itself in Africa when you try to remove a disgruntled army chief. The president, Mohamed Bazoum had wanted to sack the head of his presidential guard, Tchiani, who in an act of self preservation simply overthrew him and blamed the surging Islamist insurgency as his reason for the coup.
President Bazoum has failed to take on board the lesson that in Africa, tribe is very important and he a minority ethnic Arab has left a majority Hausa in charge of his personal security. In Africa, you do not underestimate a man with a gun and with troops under his command no matter how stupid you think he is and he paid a very heavy price for his carelessness. It did not help that the American Rangers trained anti-terrorist fighting force spent valuable hours debating whether to storm the Presidential Palace and free him rather than taking immediate decisive action which might actually have succeeded in the immediate aftermath of the coup.
All the leaders of the three countries have followed a similar strategy to consolidate power and in particular found a common cause in tapping into the deeply held anti French and anti-Western sentiments. After the coup of 2021 in Mali, the country started a pivot to Russia and President Macron of France announced a gradual withdrawal of French forces which at that time formed a part of Operation Barkhane, meant to fight Islamist in the Sahel Region.
Operation Barkhane set up in August 2014, was the successor to Operation Serval which was hugely successful in driving the Islamist out of Northern Mali by 15 July 2014. On 18 March 2022, rather than the phased withdrawal proposed by Macron no doubt for security reasons, the junta asked the French to withdraw with immediate effect! As it was, the French withdrew fully by 15 August 2022 partly in order to protect the UN Force and forces from other nations. Mali also asked the UN peace keeping mission; United Nations Multidimensional integrated Stabilisation Mission in Mali (MINUSMA) to withdraw with immediate effect in June 2023, though its mandate expired on the 30th of the month, thus preventing the UN Security Council from extending the mandate as it cannot operate without the consent of the host country. This was despite the UN troops having been in the country for ten years and losing around 300 troops. This was a slap in the face for all the sacrifice in terms of personnel and cost that the UN has made for the country. It was an almost inexplicable decision considering that the alternative to both the UN and French troops was in Wagner forces from Russia.
ECOWAS imposed sanctions on all three countries; and for Niger as an example, it included border closure, asset freeze of its state enterprises in ECOWAS Central Bank and Commercial Banks, closure of land and air borders, establishment of a no fly zone, suspension of all commercial and financial transactions between ECOWAS member states and Niger, travel ban and asset freeze on military leaders, their families and those who agree to serve in the military regime.
ECOWAS also threatened military action against Niger. All sanctions have since been lifted.
The sanctions and measures taken by ECOWAS are right. Rather than seeking reconciliation and negotiations, the leadership of the three countries are behaving in an out of control manner like drunken sailors. They are in a very weak position but this fact is not being impressed upon them by the regional block. It would only encourage petulance and might just about encourage military takeovers in other fragile states if the current kid gloves approach is not drastically reversed. Also, by failing to act we are only reinforcing a cycle of failure. For all three states, an ostentatious reason given for the coup was to fight the Islamist insurgency and in all three cases, this has gotten much worse than it was before the coups. Coincidentally, all three states are landlocked and rely exclusively on their West African neighbors for their imports.
Niger presents the best example of why pandering to their self-indulgence might just be considered the better policy option by Nigeria. What are these issues. We have a long border with Niger, in fact our longest border at 1,608km with seven states bordering Niger and but for the quirks of colonialism many parts of Northern Nigeria and Niger should really be one country. Niger borders seven countries including Algeria to the NW and Libya to the NE, presenting unique security challenges.
Fifty-four percent of Niger’s 25m people is Hausa, 6.5%% Fulani and 4.6% Kanuri. There is also a significant cross border population of Shuwa Arabs, so it’s fair to say that over 65% of the population of Niger have affinity with Nigeria. Based on this ethnic affinity there was a significant uproar by Northern elites when the initial sanctions were imposed by ECOWAS which has President Bola Ahmed Tinubu as president. It was a knee jerk and very unstrategic emotive outcry even if cross border ethnic affinity is not something to be taken for granted in making decisions. Aside from this internal opposition fueled by cynical ethnic sentiments, the bigger elephant in the room was the security situation. With the collapse of Libya, the Sahel is awash with all sorts of small arms and trained fighters that had hitherto been a part of the Libyan Army. What started initially as a Tuareg independence movement across the three countries have become full blown Islamist Insurgencies which would be discussed later. This is aside the Boko Haram Insurgency that has been ravaging South East Niger, North East Nigeria, North West Cameroun and Western Chad.
To deal with this insurgency and to prevent the spread of Islamic fundamentalism, there needs to be cohesive security cooperation between the different countries in the sub-region given the ease with which people move across borders and ethnic affinity across countries. It calls for close cooperation between countries to deny insurgents a rest and refitting space and the ability to play one country against the other.
Matters of international diplomacy must not be determined on the basis of short term emotions but longer term strategic interests. It’s difficult to see how a military regime to our immediate north is in our long term interests. How a coup would take place to our north without detection is a glaring failure of intelligence and it is quite surprising or at least as in public domain that there was no extensive inquiry into how this happened and the National Intelligence Agency (NIA) were completely blindsided. The DGSE, the French external intelligence agency on the contrary picked up the scents of a coup and advised the political leadership up to hours before the coup to bolster the security of President Bazoum with special forces. In the case of France, the failure was on the part of the political leadership by failing to act rather than an intelligence failure.
The West African sub region is where it is. We have de facto military regimes in Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso and Guinea. We have a pervasive Islamic insurgency in the Sahel consuming the countries. According to the Global Terrorism Index for 2025, the Sahel remains the epicenter of terrorism accounting for over half of global terrorism deaths of 7,555.
The Sahel countries continually are taking the wrong decisions inimical to their self-interest, such as expulsion of French troops and UN troops in Mali and in Burkina Faso and Niger, French troops and American Rangers. The more seasoned troops were then replaced by Wagner troops who, unfortunately, are not as professional and proficient as the troops that they replaced. They have also pulled out of ECOWAS in a decision announced in January 2024 and actioned in January 2025. They have in the alternative formed in September 2023, the Alliance of Sahelian States (AES) initially as a defence pact. Niger has also withdrawn from the Multinational Joint Task Force that includes the countries, Nigeria, Niger, Chad and Cameroun. All three countries have imposed a 0.5% tariff on all imports from ECOWAS states.
In reality they have been the aggressors even after ECOWAS has offered them the olive branch. The fact of the matter is that the ECOWAS bureaucracy has been incompetent and in reality should have been replaced wholescale. Niger is not Gambia. A military option should never ever have been on the table for Niger. You do not make a threat that you cannot carry out. That the fundamental altruism is lost on seasoned diplomats is nothing short of extraordinary. If it knew as an institution it was not prepared to see the sanctions through then it should not have advised the political leadership on this path. However, the missteps of ECOWAS never justifies the petulance and wrong decisions of the AES. The insurgency is now more rampant, in all the three countries Jihadists are gaining more ground, moving southwards and have launched attacks on Togo, Cote D’Voire and Benin Republic. Ghana has been spared probably because of the real calculus on the part of the Jihadists not to upturn the supply lines. Nigeria has always had the Al Queda affliated Ansaru and more recently the Lakurawa movement which was lying dormant but reared its head are all thought to be linked with JNIM. Of the many reasons for rapprochement with the AES; regional trade, food security, ethnic affinity, cross border projects and security, a key one, security, is not going to get better under the current arrangement. This presents a very fundamental existential threat to Nigeria.
The greatest existential threat to the country at the moment is the Sahelian insurgencies bursting south. We would not be able to cope and it may well sound the death knell of the country. The Islamists are in two groups. Jama’at Nusrat ul-Islam wa al-Muslimin (JNIM) and its ally, Ansarul Islam. JNIM formed in March 2017 by a merger of at least four Al Qaeda affliated groups including Saharan branch of the Al Qaeda in the Maghreb (AQIM), which had briefly seized control of Northern Mali in 2012 before being outsted by French troops in 2013 in Operation Serval. It is led by Iyad Ag Ghali, a Malian Tuareg.
Omniously, his deputy Amadou Koufa is Fulani. Ansarul Islam, now led by Abdoul Salam Dicko is a largely Fulani group. It is important not to underestimate the risks these movements pose to our corporate existence and to recognize that overrunning Nigeria must be the ultimate strategic objective. The second group is the ISIS affliated group; Islamic State-Sahel Province (ISSP), formed in 2015. It is largely made up of Fulanis with some Dahoussahak, a Tuareg affiliated clan. It is believed that ISSP uses the Northwest part of Nigeria as a supply route.
Thus being a fundamental threat to Nigeria, a new thinking is called for. The old way would produce the same result and Ansaru, Lakurawa, Mahmuda and all sorts of sundry groups linked to the Sahelian Insurgents can only get stronger. What we carelessly call farmer herder clash may actually be a vanguard to something more sinister, which at its heart is probabaly ethnic and religious expansionism. We cannot continue to treat the situation with kid gloves moreso as especially in Niger and Mali, the regimes are entrenching themselves by a self-serving and insincere, so called transition programme. In Burkina Faso, the regime seeks to perpetuate itself by populism and unbridled propaganda and this has captivated the imagination of youths across sub Saharan Africa seeking for an authentic African hero.
It then begs the question of what should be done as things must not remain the same. They are land locked and resource poor countries in a weak position but they are acting as if they are in a strong position. They need to be shown tough love so that they can come to the negotiation table with sincerity. How to achieve this is not easy given that they have called the bluff of ECOWAS with success. Recently, they also took on Algeria, their only other credible access to the sea in a clear demonstration of their recklessness. ECOWAS has a major leverage. Access to sea; this should be used. Corresponding transit taxes should be introduced by all ECOWAS countries, borders must be tightened especially as the ECOWAS protocol on movement is no longer applicable to them, the viability of asset freeze and visa bans for families investigated and credible regime change options considered. Burkina Faso at some point, without external prompting would likely have a regime change in the near future given the dynamics in the country and we should strive to tighten the screw on Niger so that its citizens would realise that the regime is not in their interest. The recent transfer of palliative fuel to Niger is thus a bad move and not in our interest. Such pampering should stop and not too soon. Our latitude to act may be constrained somewhat by the politics of 2027 given the cross-border affinities and the tendency for the opposition to cynically exploit this, but act we must within the latitude consistent with getting reelected and our long term strategic interest.
There is no country in the world that has more knowledge on these insurgents than France. We need all the help we can get to fight these insurgents and a small French base gathering signal intelligence about the Jihadists from the Sahel to Nigeria and beyond with an intelligence and special forces training complement is actually in our national interest, not against it. France together with other colonialist, did a lot of terrible things to Africa, many of which still rankle. But on this matter of the fight against the Sahelian Insurgents, there is perfect alignment of interest. France’s concern is the Insurgents crossing the Mediterranean into Europe, ours is them overwhelming our national security and also for now we stand as a bulwark against a continuous Jihadist belt from the Sahel to the Horn and Southern Africa, in effect protecting much of sub Saharan Africa south of the equator. This scenario of a continuous Jihadist belt is a scenario being actively considered in some circles and is not of a fertile imagination. I stand with France Afrique firmly on this issue of combating terrorism and allowing them a base in Nigeria would be mutually beneficial.
The Colonialists were frequently on the wrong side of history. This time, on the looming existential fight for Nigeria against the Sahel Islamists, France Afrique is on the right side and we need them more than they need us even as we both need each other.
Awonaiya writes from Lagos, Nigeria.
