Niger: Restoring Bazoum amounts to utopia – Junta

Gen. Mohamed Toumba Boubacar, the Interior minister of Niger said Sunday October 22 during an international Conference held in Lome, Togo, that the regional bloc ECOWAS’s ambition to reinstate Mohamed Bazoum, removed from power on July 26 by a junta, is a fantasy.

The conference themed: Lome Peace and Security Forum (LPSF), is the first international platform offered to the junta to defend itself amid the ongoing beef with ECOWAS willing to restore Bazoum militarily.

“We’ve come mainly to restore security,” Boubacar said. “Under such circumstances, we can’t say that we’ll have to attack Niger and re-install the deposed President. Militarily, that’s not possible, and it’s a fantasy, when we know the conditions in which the President finds himself, and that today he’s in a state of emergency,” he said.

“We’ll say it loud and clear, on one condition: if they force the issue, perhaps it’s his corpse they’ll have to come and get. If that’s the objective, perhaps the attack could be justified. If not, I don’t see how we can come back and try to restore President Bazoum”, added Mohamed Toumba Boubacar.

The ECOWAS in August said it had prepared a standby force ready to intervene should diplomatic efforts fail. The regional bloc also slapped economic sanctions on the West African country. The junta slammed the sanctions and branded them illegal. Togo took distance with the ECOWAS on the military option and adopted a soft position on the crisis.

Last week the junta said it foiled an escape plan aiming at smuggling Bazoum out of the country through neighboring Nigeria.