The General Abdourahamane Tiani and his comrades are not willing to back down. The President of the National Council for the Safeguard of the Nation (CNSP) appeared on national television on Wednesday evening with a speech that demonstrates their determination to complete the removal of Mohamed Bazoum.
In Niger, the coup leaders are not shaken despite the battery of economic sanctions and the threat of military intervention from ECOWAS. In a statement read on national television on Wednesday, August 2, 2023, Abdourahamane Tiani described these sanctions as “cynical and unjust.”
According to General Tiani, the actions of ECOWAS and certain powers constitute “interference,” which he is not willing to accept. “We refuse any interference in the internal affairs of Niger,” he declared firmly.
The leader of the coup believes that ECOWAS’ attitude aims to “humiliate the Defense and Security Forces, Niger, and its people” and to make “the country ungovernable.” “Nowhere in this contemptuous and bellicose attitude have the leaders taken into account the sovereignty of our country,” he lamented.
Furthermore, the National Council for the Safeguard of the Nation rejects the sanctions of ECOWAS and “refuses to yield to any threat, from wherever it may come.”
