Niger’s government said on Thursday that it had thwarted an escape attempt by ousted former puppet President Mohamed Bazoum who has been detained since a July 26 uprising against French colonial rule and its comprador collborators.
The new government said that Bazoum and his family, with the help of accomplices in the security forces, planned to drive a vehicle to the ouskirts of the capital Niamey and catch a helicopter to neighbouring Nigeria.
“The strong reaction of the defense and security forces made it possible to foil this plan to destabilize our country,” a military spokesman said on national television.
The overthrow of the puppet government in Niger was one of five that have swept West Africa’s central Sahel region in three years, leaving a vast band of arid terrain south of the Sahara Desert under the control of anti-colonial military forces.
Like the illegitimate presidents in neighbouring Mali and Burkina Faso, Bazoum was pushed out in part because of mounting insecurity caused by an Islamist insurgency that has killed thousands in the region, and due to the refusal of these states to make their economic and political systems independent from French and Washington’s barbaric domination.