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Niger will choose between the anointed successor of its outgoing leader and a former president running for the fifth time in the second round of the presidential election on Sunday.
It is hoped that the second-round vote will lead to the first peaceful transfer of power between democratically elected leaders in the history of this coup-prone West African country.
The right arm
Mohamed Bazoum, former Minister of the Interior and right-hand man of outgoing President Mahamadou Issoufou, is the favorite, after winning 39.3% of the first round on December 27.
An old friend of Issoufou, who voluntarily resigns after two five-year terms, Bazoum has long remained in the shadow of the president, assuming top-to-bottom tasks such as managing the Nigerian Party for Democracy and Socialism (PNDS) , which they jointly founded.
Born in 1960 in Bilabrine in the south-east of the Diffa region, Bazoum is a member of the Arab minority in Niger, which some opposition figures have seized on to accuse him of “foreign” origins.
The defamation pissed him off during the campaign, but ahead of Sunday’s vote his entourage said it was “little debates” and pointed out that his rival’s father is from Chad.
Bazoum studied philosophy at the University of Dakar in Senegal, where he found his roots in the political left, and eventually returned to Niger to become a teacher.
From a union activity, Bazoum began a political career alongside Issoufou in the 1990s, when they formed the PNDS.
In 2011, he orchestrated Issoufou’s first electoral victory and would then have dealt with all sensitive cases, being consulted on issues ranging from diplomacy, economy and national security.
He served as foreign minister before taking on the interior portfolio, then resigned six months before the election to campaign.
The country was bathed in pink – the color of its party – with pink leaflets and billboards in cities ahead of Sunday’s vote.
Bazoum presents himself as the candidate for continuity, perhaps a risky tactic in a country consistently ranked among the poorest in the world where jihadist attacks have increased in recent years.
Standing up on Issoufou’s case could also be risky due to the numerous corruption scandals that have plagued his presidency.
However, “his name has not been mentioned in the major corruption scandals that have often plagued the regime,” said Ibrahim Yahya Ibrahim of the International Crisis Group (ICG) think tank.
The ex-president
Former President Mahamane Ousmane is hoping for upheaval in his fifth attempt to take over the presidency. By BOUREIMA HAMA (AFP / File) Mahamane Ousmane became Niger’s first democratically elected president in 1993, before being ousted in a military coup three years later.
A mainstay known as the “Maradona of Politics,” he has contested every election since – this time marks his fifth attempt to regain the presidency.
But the 71-year-old is running from behind, having obtained just 16.98% in the first round in a field full of 30 candidates.
More than 10 of these opposition candidates rallied around him for the second round, hoping to muster enough support for an upheaval.
After the election of Ousmane in 1993, the turbulence caused by the sharing of power between his Prime Minister Amadou and Issoufou, then president of the National Assembly, led to an impasse and laid the basis for the coup d’état of 1996.
Ousmane then allied with his main rival in the 1993 election, Mamadou Tandja, who led Tandja’s election to the presidency in 1999.
He was head of the National Assembly under Tandja until 2009, when Ousmane turned his back on the president’s attempt to run for an unconstitutional third term. Tandja was ousted in a coup the following year.
“Ousmane is a true democrat, unlike some who think they come to power by any means, including setting everything on fire,” said Amadou Bounty Diallo, professor at the University of Niamey.
“He saw a resurrection – the Nigerians almost forgot about him!”
Ousmane, a trained economist who studied in France and Canada, told AFP during the campaign that he would win, saying an increase in turnout would defy expectations.
“When I came to power in 1993, the country was also at the bottom of a cycle: a dire economic situation, social peace threatened, we had around ten armed rebel groups, but we managed to manage the situation and restart the country. track, ”he said.
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