Niger: the widening gap between Niamey’s security promises and life in exposed regions

An investigation into the growing divide between the security rhetoric of the transition and the daily experience of populations exposed to attacks.

They pledged to reclaim control. To restore security. To return to Niger its sovereignty and its dignity. Three years after the July 2023 coup d’État, the Conseil national pour la sauvegarde de la patrie (CNSP) continues to present its seizure of power as a historic break.

But far from Niamey, a different reality is taking shape.

In areas regularly struck by armed groups, populations continue to live with fear, uncertainty and, at times, the feeling of being left to fend for themselves. Villages are affected, families displaced, activities paralysed. And one question returns insistently: where are the leaders when attacks strike?

For this may be one of the most troubling contradictions of this military transition.

The regime promises security but remains distant from danger zones

Since coming to power, the CNSP has made the security question one of the principal arguments for its legitimacy. The overthrow of President Mohamed Bazoum was justified notably by the deterioration of the security situation.

The promise was clear: to do better.

Yet in the regions most exposed to violence, particularly in the west of the country, attacks continue to punctuate the lives of populations. Faced with this reality, one observation fuels questions: the officials who embody the transition rarely appear in areas directly struck, at the moment when inhabitants confront the consequences of attacks.

The authorities communicate from the capital. They announce operations, hail military victories or promise responses. But for populations living near the most dangerous zones, the question is far more concrete: who comes to assess the damage? Who meets the affected families? Who explains what happened and what will be done to prevent it from happening again?

A regime that has made security its principal justification cannot indefinitely content itself with talking about war from the offices of the capital.

Niamey under surveillance, the peripheries under pressure

This is one of the most visible paradoxes of the system put in place since the coup d’État.

At the top, the regime’s security has become an absolute priority. Signs of mistrust within the military apparatus itself, changes in the hierarchy and the multiplication of control measures testify to a power preoccupied with its own stability.

Meanwhile, far from the political centre, populations remain confronted with another insecurity: the kind that kills, displaces, closes schools, destroys the local economy and upends daily life.

Two realities thus appear to coexist.

On one side, a power concentrated on its survival and the securing of its apparatus. On the other, citizens still waiting for the promise of protection made after the coup d’État to translate concretely into their daily lives.

Sovereignty, however, should not stop at the gates of Niamey.

Populations paying the price of war

Behind every military communiqué lies a reality that official figures rarely capture in its full dimension.

There are families leaving their villages.

Farmers hesitating to return to their fields.

Traders whose activities are paralysed.

Children whose schooling is disrupted.

And entire communities living in anticipation of the next attack.

It is precisely in these territories that the success or failure of the transition should be measured.

Not only in official ceremonies.

Not solely in speeches about sovereignty.

But in the state’s capacity to protect those who have neither escort, nor palace, nor special security detail.

The problem is not only military. It is also political.

For when a population feels that its leaders are visible for ceremonies, speeches and announcements, but absent when danger strikes, confidence inevitably begins to erode.

A transition that communicates more than it confronts reality?

The CNSP has built a significant part of its image on the break with the former system. New partners, new diplomatic discourse, denunciation of foreign influences: communication around sovereignty has become one of the pillars of the regime.

But communication does not replace presence.

A state can announce victories. It can denounce its adversaries. It can mobilise the vocabulary of patriotism and resistance.

But one question remains: do populations truly feel more protected?

This is where official discourse meets its limits.

For sovereignty is not measured solely by the number of foreign partners one expels or welcomes. It is also measured by a state’s capacity to control its territory and protect its citizens, particularly those living in the most vulnerable zones.

Yet when attacks continue and populations remain exposed, slogans eventually collide with a reality far more difficult to disguise.

The silence of the field, the echo of speeches

The question now facing Niger goes beyond the person of General Abdourahamane Tiani alone.

It concerns an entire system of governance.

Can one continue to justify a seizure of power by the former regime’s security failure without accepting, three years later, to be judged on the same ground?

Can one claim proximity to the people while leaving populations in the most exposed areas waiting for a more visible state presence?

And above all, how long can a transition ask the population to wait while the promise that served as the foundation for its rise to power remains largely unfulfilled?

True patriotism is not measured by the power of a speech.

It is also measured by a leader’s capacity to look his people’s suffering in the face.

To go where the state is expected.

To acknowledge failures as well as victories.

And to understand that a power does not protect a nation from the offices of the capital alone.

The real test

In Niger, the power continues to speak of sovereignty, security and rupture.

But in areas where attacks continue to strike, another reality imposes its own questions.

Can a regime present itself as the saviour of a people without going to meet those who live daily with the consequences of insecurity?

This may be where the true assessment of the transition lies.

Not in slogans.

Not in ceremonies.

Not in televised statements.

But on those roads, in those villages and among those families who, when attacks occur, still wait to know whether the state will truly come to them.

For governing a country at war does not consist only of protecting the power. It consists first of not leaving the people alone in the face of war.