The US has expressed deep concern for Niger’s deposed president after his party said he and his family were running out of food and living under increasingly dire conditions.
President Mohamed Bazoum, the West African nation’s democratically elected leader, has been held at the presidential palace in Niamey with his wife and son since mutinous soldiers moved against him on July 26.
He has not been seen in public since the coup, although sources close to him say that has refused to resign. The family is living without electricity and has only rice and canned goods left to eat, according to a close adviser, who said Bazoum remains in good health for now.
Bazoum’s political party issued a statement confirming the president’s living conditions and said the family also was without running water.
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, spoke with Bazoum on Tuesday about recent diplomatic efforts, the state department said, and Blinken “emphasised that the safety and security of President Bazoum and his family are paramount”.
This week, Niger’s new military junta took steps to entrench itself in power and rejected international efforts to mediate. On Wednesday, it again accused former coloniser France of trying to destabilise the country, violate its closed airspace and discredit the junta’s leaders. France has dismissed the allegations as unfounded.
On Monday, the junta named a new prime minister, civilian economist Ali Mahaman Lamine Zeine. He is a former economy and finance minister who left office after a previous coup in 2010 toppled the government at the time. Zeine later worked at the African Development Bank.
“The establishment of a government is significant and signals, at least to the population, that they have a plan in place, with support from across the government,” said Aneliese Bernard, a former state department official who specialised in African affairs and is now director of Strategic Stabilization Advisors, a risk advisory group.
The junta also refused to admit meditation teams from the United Nations, the African Union and the West African regional bloc Ecowas, citing “evident reasons of security in this atmosphere of menace”, according to a letter seen by the Associated Press.
Ecowas had threatened to use military force if the junta did not reinstate Bazoum by Sunday, a deadline that the junta ignored and which passed without action from Ecowas. The bloc is expected to meet again on Thursday to discuss the situation.
The rebellious soldiers claimed that they seized power because they could do a better job at protecting the nation from jihadi violence. But most analysts and diplomats said the takeover resulted from a power struggle between the president and the head of his presidential guard, Gen Abdourahmane Tchiani, who now says he runs the country.
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