AFRICA/NIGER - Chronicles from the military coup capital

Niamey (Fides News Agency) - While the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) decided yesterday, at the summit in Abuja (Nigeria), to activate the "standby force" - tasked with intervening "as soon as possible" to restore constitutional order in Niger, what has life been like in Niamey for the past few hours? Here is an account sent to Fides News Agency by Fr. Mauro Armanino, a missionary with the SMA (Society of African Missions) in Niger's capital.
"Seen from afar, it should be hell, or just short of that, here in Niamey. Putschists, rebels, troops, possibilists, maximalists, pro-government folks, die-hards, and among all this, the dreaded (and, for the moment, shelved) armed intervention to restore democratic order. On the side, mediators from the regional organization ECOWAS, from the African Union and the UN were returned to sender, the borders have been closed to merchandise and the repeated (and not unheard of) interruptions of the power supply. All of this and much more, especially in the well-known 'Radio-trottoir', i.e., rumors, which multiply like the threats and fears that walk together like twin siblings. In all of this, during the progressive coup on Wednesday July 26, 2023, there were two unchanging factors that at first sight might seem out of place given the context.
The first were the traditional August rains falling as usual, apparently making no distinctions between one regime and the other, on the capital and on the countryside. This benefits the farmers and most of all the millet, in its growth phase, which is their main nourishment, established and immovable. The second reality, which emerges in this particular transition, is that of street cleaners removing sand which - stubborn as it can be - takes up, takes over, decorates, delimits and interrogates the city's roads. In their green and yellow vests, the colors of the Niamey Nyala municipality (the charming, in the Zarma language), adorned with besoms, shovels and other similar tools, they remove sand from the paved roadways in the city center, abandoning it on the wayside. Sooner or later a truck will come by, or more likely, wheelbarrows seeking to temporarily keep it off the road surface.
Amid these two unchanging factors and the third one listed above - that is the untimely, yet loyal and constant, cutting off of power - the coup takes place by way of appointments, arrests, and attempts at gathering the highest possible consensus among the citizenry. Rain, sand and electricity - with the prices of food rising, and with a sense of patient submission to the Divine Will, which provides all - keep track of the days in expectation of something to unfold, but what that something is, no one really knows. Perhaps - and this is but a remote possibility - the coup too, like politics and democracy, is made of sand". (L.M.) (Fides News Agency 11/8/2023)

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