SONNA – Niger\u2019s coup leader has declared that he will not bow down to pressure to reinstate deposed President Mohamed Bazoum, criticizing sanctions imposed by West African leaders as \u201cillegal\u201d and \u201cinhumane\u201d and urging his countrymen to get ready to defend their nation.<\/p>\n
General\u00a0Abdourahamane Tchiani\u2018s comments, issued in a televised address on Wednesday, came as the defense chiefs of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) met in neighboring Nigeria\u00a0to discuss the crisis in Niger.<\/p>\n
The regional bloc has imposed\u00a0severe economic sanctions\u00a0on Niger and threatened to use force if Bazoum\u2019s presidency is not restored by August 6. It has also dispatched a delegation to Niger \u2013 headed by former Nigerian leader Abdulsalami Abubakar \u2013 to negotiate with the soldiers who seized power.<\/p>\n
Tchiani, however, remained defiant.<\/p>\n
The self-declared leader said the military \u201crejects these sanctions altogether and refuses to give in to any threats, wherever they come from. We refuse any interference in the internal affairs of Niger\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe, therefore, call on the people of Niger as a whole and their unity to defeat all those who want to inflict unspeakable suffering on our hard-working populations and destabilize our country,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Tchiani, who commands Niger\u2019s presidential guard, went on to warn of difficult times ahead and said that the \u201chostile and radical\u201d attitudes of those who oppose his rule provide no added value. The sanctions imposed by ECOWAS were \u201cillegal, unfair, inhuman and unprecedented\u201d, he said.<\/p>\n
Source: Al Jazeera<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" SONNA – Niger\u2019s coup leader has declared that he will not bow down to pressure to reinstate deposed President Mohamed Bazoum, criticizing sanctions imposed by West African leaders as \u201cillegal\u201d and \u201cinhumane\u201d and urging his countrymen to get ready to defend their nation. General\u00a0Abdourahamane Tchiani\u2018s comments, issued in a televised address on Wednesday, came as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":120,"featured_media":419308,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[78],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-419307","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419307","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/120"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=419307"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419307\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":419309,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419307\/revisions\/419309"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/419308"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=419307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=419307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=419307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}