APA-Niamey (Niger) – The economist Ali Mahaman Lamine Zeine has been appointed head of the government resulting from the July 26 coup.
Chief of staff of President Mamadou Tandja in 2001, he was appointed Minister of Economy and Finance in 2003. He left the position in 2010, when Salou Djibo staged a coup against Mamadou Tandja after the latter had attempted to retain power. During these events, Lamine Zeine was placed under house arrest, as were several of his former colleagues, while President Tandja was killed.
After his ministerial functions, Ali Mahaman Lamine Zeine was appointed representative of the African Development Bank (AfDB) in Cote d’Ivoire, where his passage was well appreciated by the Ivorian authorities. In 2014, he left Abidjan for Libreville, where he held the same position.
Until his appointment, the new Niger Prime Minister was stationed in Chad as an AfDB representative. The Nigerien leader had already appointed a head of cabinet and a secretary general to the government.
The appointment of a head of government comes 24 hours after the expiration of the ultimatum set by ECOWAS for the CNSP to release and reinstate Mohamed Bazoum. Despite his seizure by the junta, Mahamadou Issoufou’s successor has not resigned. Neither has his government. In the early hours of the coup, his foreign minister declared himself interim prime minister and called for resistance to the coup plotters.
On Sunday, the Niger junta, supported by Bamako and Ouagadougou, declared that it had observed a “preliminary deployment” of ECOWAS troops in “two Central African countries” to take part in the ‘war’ against Niger, and announced the closure of airspace from August 6 until further notice.
The ECOWAS chiefs of staff met in Abuja from Wednesday, August 1 to Friday, August 3 to define the plan for a military intervention, which is not, however, the first option of the community organization.
The current chairman of ECOWAS, Nigeria’s Bola Ahmad Tinubu, has summoned his colleagues to a new summit on Thursday August 10th to discuss the political situation in Niger.
AC/lb/abj/APA