ECOWAS Disapproves of the Three-Year Transition Plan for the Niger Junta as “Completely Unacceptable”

Abdel-Fatau Musah, Commissioner of ECOWAS, reiterated that the West African group is against it.

The Niger junta’s goal of a three-year transition of power, presumably to a democratic administration, has been rejected by the Economic Community of West African States.

General Abdourahamane Tiani, head of the military junta, stated in a televised speech that “our ambition is not to seize power.” Any change in leadership “would not last longer than three years,” he claimed.

Amb. Abdel-Fatau Musah, the ECOWAS Commissioner for Political Affairs, Peace, and Security, declared that the West African bloc will not accept it during a live interview on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily on Monday.

Insisting that the commission had experience with “these cat-and-mouse games with these military regimes,” he said, “ECOWAS insists on the restoration of constitutional order as quickly as possible.”

Musah referred to the 2010 adoption of the “new” constitution for Niger, which he said was updated in 2017.

On August 21, 2023, Amb. Abdel-Fatau Musah, the ECOWAS Commissioner for Political Affairs, Peace, and Security, appeared on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily.

What significant alteration to the nation’s government structure is necessary for it to take three years to try something new? To put ECOWAS off course and then do whatever they want, he said, is similar to using subterfuge.

“In other West African countries with a military government, they only had around three years, but they are already ‘negotiating’ with their people to get another 18 months. In Nigeria, a president who was elected democratically only has four years to serve.

What authority do they have, therefore, to start out with three years? And we are aware that it won’t stop there.