ECOWAS, Nigeria and the Niger Coup Sanctions: Time to Recalibrate

In July, a group of military officers overthrew Niger’s government, sending shock waves through coup-plagued West Africa. Within days, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) announced a raft of sanctions on Niger, the strictest the bloc has ever imposed on an errant member state. Members of the fifteen-nation bloc (excluding the four members suspended since falling under military rule – Burkina Faso, Guinea, Mali and Niger), along with the eight-member West African Economic and Monetary Union, agreed to close all borders with Niger, suspend financial transactions and freeze the country’s assets in external banks. ECOWAS also issued an ultimatum to the junta to restore constitutional order and reinstate the ousted president, Mohamed Bazoum, within one week or face other measures, notably including military intervention.

ECOWAS’s initial reaction to the Niger coup was understandable, informed as it was by legitimate concerns about the risks of coup contagion in West Africa. Nigeria helped shape this reaction. Eager to earn his stripes as a strong leader amid a regional crisis, newly elected Nigerian President Bola Tinubu, who took over as ECOWAS chairman two weeks before the coup, was one of the regional heads of state who advocated for forceful intervention to reinstate Bazoum. Most leaders seemed to agree that Nigeria’s army, the biggest in West Africa, would spearhead any military action.

But ECOWAS and Tinubu appear to have overshot the mark. Although the ECOWAS sanctions sent a strong signal of disapproval concerning coups and have undoubtedly created external pressure on Niger’s generals, they have also backfired in ways relevant to both Niamey and Abuja. They have created severe hardship in Niger with adverse boomerang effects on Nigeria – crippling a vibrant cross-border economy straddling the long Nigeria-Niger border, disrupting livelihoods, exacerbating humanitarian challenges, and jeopardising big rail and gas projects that could bolster regional trade. On the political front, the sanctions threaten to harm bilateral cooperation on a range of important issues, particularly security.

Months after the sanctions were imposed in early August, a policy recalibration would serve the peoples of both Niger and Nigeria, while having security and economic benefits throughout the region. While pressing to restore democratic rule in Niger, the Nigerian government should in parallel use its influence with ECOWAS to press for a review of the sanctions package in place. In particular, ECOWAS sanctions should be recast to focus on the direct interests of junta leaders who bear responsibility for returning the country to constitutional rule, rather than punish the populations of Niger and northern Nigeria as a whole.

Hardship and Pushback in Niger

While the ECOWAS sanctions’ purpose was to pressure Niger’s de facto military authorities to reinstate Bazoum, that has not happened. Meanwhile, much of the impact of the broad-based measures is being felt by civilians.

The ECOWAS sanctions have cut off Niger from many of its traditional trading partners, worsening chronic food insecurity among vulnerable groups. The junta has maintained relations with neighbours Burkina Faso, Chad and Mali, whom it sees as allies because all three are under military rule. But the borders with Benin and Nigeria, the two countries from which Niger normally imports food and other key necessities, remain closed. As a result, residents are grappling with shortages of medicine, cereals and imported foodstuffs like sugar, powdered milk and vegetable oil. In August, the price of rice surged by 21 per cent, according to the World Food Programme (WFP). By mid-October, the price of a 25kg (55 pound) bag of rice had jumped over 50 per cent over a two-month period. Before the coup, Niger was already facing its second-highest level of severe food insecurity since 2014, with 3.3 million (or 13.3 percent) of its 25 million people affected; the WFP says that number has probably more than doubled.

For its part, the junta is making life difficult for humanitarian organisations trying to deliver relief. Although Benin and Togo have made exemptions in their application of sanctions for humanitarian aid destined for Niger, Niger’s authorities have thus far refused entry to trucks from Benin. Alternative routes through Burkina Faso are deemed too dangerous due to the prevalence of militants there. Aid workers in Niger are meanwhile having to negotiate access to areas where vulnerable people live, with the military demanding that international organisations travel outside the capital only with armed escorts.

Power outages are further damaging Niger’s brittle economy. In normal times, the country imports more than two thirds of its electricity from its much wealthier neighbour, Nigeria, but sanctions have severely curtailed supply. Unlike in 2021, following the coup in Mali – when ECOWAS excluded food, electricity and petroleum products from the punitive economic and financial restrictions it imposed – the bloc has carved out no such exemptions for Niger. Major cities like Niamey, Maradi and Zinder are suffering prolonged blackouts and serious power rationing, and many businesses have turned to using generators. With fuel in short supply, those that are unable to procure diesel or to bear the cost of a generator have shut down altogether.

As for whom Nigeriens blame for this state of affairs, there is little definitive evidence one way or another. Under a regime like that of the junta in Niamey, scoping public opinion is next to impossible, and any polls results are at best indicative. In August, a survey by a polling firm, Premise Data, found that 79 per cent of respondents supported the junta and its actions, but the sample size was small and non-representative. On the whole, the junta has sought to rally citizen support by casting its power grab as a struggle with France, the former colonial power, which took a tough line with the generals following the August takeover. But whether political sentiment is with the junta, or anti-junta sentiment is repressed, the sanctions regime has not translated into overt domestic political pressure on the generals.

The junta has mounted a legal challenge to the sanctions. On 21 November, along with six Nigerien organisations and a Niger national, it asked the ECOWAS Court of Justice sitting in Abuja to order the sanctions lifted. In seeking relief, the petitioners argued that ECOWAS has been punishing Nigeriens with harsher sanctions than it applied following coups in other member states. For its part, ECOWAS argued that the junta is not recognised under the regional bloc’s protocol and is therefore ineligible to be granted a hearing by the regional court. The court adjourned until 7 December, when it will deliver its ruling.

Impact on Nigeria

While international attention has focused on the Nigerien people’s hardship, the sanctions are also affecting Nigeria, which shares a border of roughly 1,600km with Niger.

Nigeria was already in financial distress before the turbulence in Niger. In October 2022, four months before Nigeria’s presidential election, the Central Bank decided to replace the country’s entire stock of naira bills (the local currency) with new bank notes in just three months, triggering an unprecedented cash shortage that left Nigerians queuing at banks for days. The sudden currency makeover proved such a disaster that it was suspended the following March; the suspension was extended indefinitely in November. Then, at his inauguration in May, Tinubu – who campaigned promising to alleviate poverty – ended longstanding fuel subsidies that had drained $10 billion from the budget in 2022. Petrol prices almost tripled overnight. The following month, his government abandoned a years-long currency peg in order to allow the naira to drop to more market-reflective rates.

While foreign investors say Tinubu’s policy measures will help fix the ailing economy, local businesses are in turmoil and citizens are paying a huge price in the meantime. The fuel subsidy’s removal has sent transport costs soaring, which in turn has accelerated the pace of price increases for basic food items amid a wider inflationary surge. In October, year-on-year food inflation rose to 32 per cent.

Since August, the closed border with Niger has been aggravating Nigeria’s woes. Particularly hard hit are millions of people in Nigeria’s seven northernmost states who work in agriculture or the informal sector, or who rely on cross-border trade. These states were already in a bad place economically before the coup-linked sanctions hit. Earlier in the year, the UN Food and Agricultural Organization had estimated that 3.3 million people were food-insecure in three states (Borno, Adamawa and Yobe) of the North East region and 2.9 million critically so in the North West. It also projected that these numbers could rise to 4.4 million and 4.3 million respectively, in the lean season to December, if urgent action was not taken.

But if things were bad in the north, the sanctions have certainly made them worse. In October, Cadre Harmonisé – an analytic tool for understanding food insecurity – warned that political crises in Niger (and, presumably, related measures such as the border closure) could have a “huge” impact on food security and malnutrition in both the North East and North West regions of Nigeria. Should Niger’s economy collapse and create an influx of refugees, the humanitarian situation could worsen still further.

Among other things, the sanctions have strained strong commercial ties that northerners have with Niger. Several border communities mostly hire labourers from Niger to work the fields. Retail shops and restaurants that rely on customers coming in from Niger are in a slump. Formal traffic across the border has ground to a halt as Nigerian officials stop vehicles from travelling to the country next door. The implications of the cessation of cross-border trade are discussed further below.

The closed border is also pushing the economy in parts of northern Nigeria underground. As was to be expected, smuggling, a long-running problem at the border and throughout the region, is on the rise. People are using motorcycles, tricycles or donkeys to ship goods across the border, notably around Illela (Sokoto state), the Jibiya to Daura/Kongolam axis (Katsina state) and in Zurmi local government area (Zamfara state), with some traversing hazardous terrain where armed gangs operate. Many smugglers work with compromised customs and immigration officers who, residents say, are demanding increasingly high bribes. Elsewhere, for example in the Dankama area of Katsina state, smugglers have reportedly attacked security personnel who have tried to stop them. Some of these smuggling networks and the illicit economies they are establishing may be difficult to dismantle when the border opens again.

Sanctions have also had a negative effect on security. Rampant insecurity – driven by the Boko Haram insurgency, herder-farmer violence and banditry – already made daily life difficult in Nigeria’s North East and North West, and the sanctions have made it worse. Women who became sole providers after their husbands were killed by bandits or jihadists are now facing a potential loss of their livelihoods, to the extent that these were linked to cross-border trade, which in turn threatens to deepen poverty and worsen child malnutrition. The border closure also exposes women traders, who may find themselves forced onto illegal trading routes, to exploitation by smugglers and violence by bandits. A gender activist, Sarah Dantsoho Tama, told Crisis Group that the slowdown in economic activities could make women and girls in border communities increasingly susceptible to gender-based violence and human trafficking. The risk will grow as more women resort to begging for food or other coping practices and as desperate traders fall prey to armed groups along illegal smuggling routes.

Blocked Corridors

In considering the question of how sanctions on Niger are hurting the economies of Nigeria’s northernmost states, the impact on trading patterns is especially important.

The territory stretching from Niger’s second-largest city, Maradi, to the cities of Katsina and Kano in northern Nigeria is normally a vibrant trade corridor. In 2021, Nigeria exported $180 million worth of goods and services to Niger, including electricity, tobacco and cement, according to the UN international trade database. In the same year, Niger exported $56.8 million worth of goods to Nigeria, mainly livestock-derived products, fruits and refined petroleum. As these figures capture merely formally declared transactions, real trade numbers are obviously much higher when informal cross-border commerce is considered.

Trade between the two countries is also an important part of the trans-Saharan corridor, a busy route connecting Nigeria to countries like Burkina Faso and Mali and a crucial source of income for Nigeria’s transport sector. An official of the Kano state’s chamber of commerce told Crisis Group that trucks carrying about 2,000 containers got stuck at the Niger border in early August, with those transporting perishable items having to write off their cargo. In early November, long lines of trucks loaded with goods remained stranded at the borders. Traders at Kano’s Dawanau International Grains Market, which distributes grains and other cash crops throughout Nigeria and the wider region, say sales have declined by as much as 40 per cent. Traders at major cattle markets in Illela (Sokoto state) and Maigatari (Jigawa state) are also in distress.

Governors of the seven most affected states have thus far refrained from publicly pushing back against Tinubu and ECOWAS, but economic groups like the Arewa Economic Forum and prominent civil society groups like the Northern Elders Forum and Arewa Consultative Forum want the sanctions lifted. On 17 October, prompted by some of its northern members, Nigeria’s House of Representatives asked the federal government to reopen the Niger border. More recently, on 22 November, a group of members of the ECOWAS Parliament, led by a Nigerian senator from Borno state in the North East, Ali Ndume, appealed to ECOWAS leaders to “lift the sanctions and open the closed border” as parliament had already recommended. The overriding consensus is that the border closure is impoverishing border communities and impeding progress toward a negotiated resolution of the crisis.

Infrastructure Setbacks

The sanctions and attendant frictions between Niger and Nigeria could also delay or even derail important infrastructure projects meant to boost regional trade and human security.