Nigeria’s close attachment to its nearby neighbour, the Niger Republic will in the meantime no longer suffer a strain because President Bola Tinubu has initiated a reversal of the deterrent sanctions earlier imposed on the former French colony.

Following the two-day-long coup d’état initiated by Niger’s military on 26 July 2023 that removed President Mohamed Bazoum from power, Nigeria and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) took away privileges from the neighbour to ramp up pressure on the coup leaders to give up their plots.

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In Niger, the people no longer had electricity coming from Africa’s biggest economy and in case they intended it, won’t technically be able to see trade conducted between their country and Nigeria whether it is through land or air since a no-fly zone was in effect.

But it later turned out that the ECOWAS commission at its February-held extraordinary summit of Heads of State and Government was looking at other approaches or specifically peaceful mediation. It was at this event in Abuja that the bloc announced that it would no longer permit sanctions against Niger in the hope that this would reverse the country’s decision to leave ECOWAS alongside Mali and Burkina Faso where a similar military takeover had earlier occurred.

Today, I have directed the opening of Nigeria’s land and air borders with the Republic of Niger and the lifting of other sanctions against [the] Niger Republic with immediate effect in compliance with the decisions of the ECOWAS Authority of Heads of State and Government at its extraordinary summit on February 24, 2024, in Abuja where we had agreed to lift economic sanctions against the Republic of Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso, and Guinea, reads President Tinubu’s announcement of the changing of tactics.

While it awaited ECOWAS’ decision on a possible military response to the July coup, President Tinubu had given the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) the room to stop electricity supply to Niger, making life hard on the entire population although the aim was to discourage the coup d’état.

Now that the sanction has been removed, there would be a sense of shared relief by both Nigerians and their Nigerien siblings. Food prices daily going up in Nigeria, have been attributed to shortages in supply.

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Although Nigeria has its supply of grain that the country gathers from local farmers and their harvest, the import from Niger also helped to make produce such as maize and rice go around 200 million Nigerians.

When the sanctions were in place, markets noticeably witnessed limited entries of trucks transporting goods, which then made the short supplies available to be priced beyond reach. So, a peaceful response to the flourishing coup seems like it is more beneficial to the ECOWAS chair, Nigeria compared to the estranged Niger.

Ayodele Johnson

Ayodelé is a Lagos-based journalist and the Content and Editorial Coordinator at Meiza. All around the megacity, I am steering diverse lifestyle magazine audiences with ingenious hacks and insights that spur fast, informed decisions in their busy lives.