Senegal says its troops will join any ECOWAS intervention in Niger

Senegal said Thursday that it will participate if the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) decides to intervene militarily in Niger following last week’s coup.

Foreign Minister Aissata Tall Sall told reporters on Thursday that there had been one “coup too many” in the region and cited Senegal’s international commitments.

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“Senegalese soldiers, for all these reasons, will go there,” she said.

Regional bloc ECOWAS has threatened potential use of force if the junta does not restore ousted President Mohamed Bazoum by Sunday.

Niger is the fourth member of the bloc to undergo a putsch since 2020.

Speaking during a government press briefing in the capital Dakar, Tall Sall said Senegal was obligated to go along with ECOWAS’s decisions.

But she added, “Senegal’s conviction is that these coups must be stopped — that’s why we are going there”.

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She also raised the question as to why ECOWAS would send troops to Niger, when it had not done so following coups in Mali, Guinea or Burkina Faso.

“To give a simple answer, because it is one coup too many”, she said.

Military intervention in Niger ‘last resort’

The West African bloc ECOWAS believes that intervening militarily in Niger to restore the country’s elected president following a coup is a “last resort”, a senior ECOWAS official said on Wednesday.

“(The) military option is the very last option on the table, the last resort, but we have to prepare for the eventuality,” said ECOWAS commissioner Abdel-Fatau Musah, speaking at the start of a meeting of the grouping’s military chiefs in the Nigerian capital Abuja.

An ECOWAS team is in Niger to “negotiate”, added Musah, commissioner for political affairs, peace and security.

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Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) leaders on Sunday imposed trade and financial sanctions on Niger and gave the coup leaders a week to reinstate President Mohamed Bazoum or face potential use of force.

A source in Niger’s power company said Wednesday that Nigeria had cut off its electricity supply to its neighbour under the sanctions.

“Since yesterday, Nigeria has disconnected the high-voltage line transporting electricity to Niger,” the source at Nigelec told AFP.

Niger, one of the world’s poorest countries, depends on Nigeria for 70 percent of its power.

Bazoum was overthrown on July 26 when members of his own guard detained him at the presidency.

The coup — Niger’s fifth coup since independence from France in 1960 — has sparked alarm among the country’s neighbours and Western allies.

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ECOWAS’s current chair is Nigeria, West Africa’s military and economic superpower, which has vowed to take a firm line against coups that have proliferated across the region since 2020.