Talk or you die: Niger’s coup-makers to Finance minister

Soldiers in the West African nation of Niger have given the government’s Finance minister that they deposed, 48 hours to account for “stolen money” or he will be put to the stakes.

In a video that has gone viral, the Finance minister was seen weeping miserably before the cameras, at which time he was to address the media on matters arising.

While the military intervention has been decried by world leaders, including the West African regional body ECOWAS, the coup that deposed President Bazzoum had been hailed by wider sections of the country’s population.

The coup-makers are unfazed by the cacophony outside Niger’s borders as they marshal their coercive authority to achieve the supposed objectives of their action. Talk or you die, that is the caveat the soldiers posed to the Finance minister. Will he act on state secrets in the manner of a talking cricket?

Niger’s latest coup de tat has underscored she is the most prone to such instabilities, and this also highlights the political volatility and its paradoxical nature within a subregion of shrill rhetorics about democracy.