To be useful and genuinely contribute to advancing our debates on the situation in Niger and the Sahel in general, these discussions must start from an inescapable reality: the ongoing recomposition of political governance systems comprises several closely intertwined dimensions that it would be futile, and even counterproductive, to try to treat in isolation.
Sovereignty, legitimacy, and the relationship to territories are not three distinct tasks that can be addressed one after the other; they are the three facets of a single process, and it is precisely their articulation—or the lack thereof—that will determine the outcome of the ongoing refoundation.
In Niger, this refoundation can only be effective if it genuinely stems from a national consensus around the constitutive elements of the societal project we collectively carry. The CNSP displays a desire for a total break with everything that may have hindered the country’s development. The intention is commendable, but it first requires a deep national introspection before even turning outward: you do not refound a country by first settling scores with the outside world; you refound it by first resolving your own internal contradictions. Ideological fervor, when it ignores the constraints of reality, risks leading to a dead end and causing more damage than the expected benefits, because a discourse of rupture that is not accompanied by a real capacity to act on reality always ends up turning against those who carry it.
On sovereignty
This is where the question of sovereignty must be reframed in concrete terms: not as a slogan, but as the demonstrated affirmation of the country’s capacity to pragmatically define its strategic choices in international relations. Too often, the debate on sovereignty is reduced to a rhetorical posture, a display intended to galvanize public opinion, without specifying the concrete instruments through which this sovereignty must be exercised: control over strategic resources, genuine diversification of economic and security partnerships, strengthening of national administrative and military capacities, and the building of a regional diplomacy capable of carrying weight in negotiations. Sovereignty cannot be decreed merely by denouncing one partner in favor of another; it is built patiently through the accumulation of one’s own capacities that reduce dependency, regardless of the direction it comes from. Proclaimed but uninstrumented sovereignty is merely a façade of sovereignty, and it is precisely this trap that the country must avoid.
Niger is free to choose its partners and negotiate the terms of its partnerships, provided, however, that this choice stems from a rational evaluation of long-term national interests, and not from a simple inversion of alliances that would replace one dependency with another under the guise of a rhetoric of rupture. There is no need to endlessly rehash resentments related to the behavior of this or that country: in this world, every actor defends its interests and mobilizes the means at its disposal to achieve them, whether they be Western powers, emerging powers, or new partners presented as saviors. There is nothing surprising in this, nor anything that should divert us from what is essential: the real question is not who is exploiting us, but what capacity we collectively give ourselves to negotiate from a position of strength and to make our own interests respected, regardless of the interlocutor. Mature diplomacy is judged by its ability to defend interests, not to designate culprits.
On popular legitimacy
Yet this capacity to negotiate from a position of strength presupposes a prerequisite that is too often forgotten: no authority can sustainably carry a project of sovereignty if it is not itself solidly legitimized from within. The real challenge facing the CNSP is therefore to emerge from this defensive posture, which generates unnecessary tension in the management of public affairs. Such a posture, if prolonged, risks transforming a hopeful moment of rupture into a simple authoritarian continuation of the flaws of the system it claims to fight. It must understand that an authority can only deeply reform if it is rooted in popular legitimacy—a legitimacy that is neither confused with circumstantial media support nor with the constrained silence that a given security or institutional context might impose.
However, in Africa more than elsewhere, this legitimacy is conceived only on the basis of respect for and the effective association of the country’s socio-cultural references: customary and religious authorities, community structures, and traditional mechanisms of mediation and social regulation, which continue to organize the daily lives of the majority of the population much more effectively, in many regions, than the institutions inherited from the post-colonial state. Ignoring these references, or instrumentalizing them without truly involving them in decisions that commit the country’s future, amounts to building a refoundation on sand, despite its desire to be durable.
Respect for communities and territories should therefore constitute the primary starting point of any national refoundation—not an afterthought added later to legitimize decisions already made at the top, but a structuring principle right from the design of reforms. Failing this, we would merely be superficially retouching a post-colonial system that continues to curb vital energies and prevent the flourishing of populations: excessive centralization of power, marginalization of certain components of society, and the confiscation of decision-making by a self-centered elite cut off from local realities. A mere superficial facelift, without any real transformation of inherited power relations or of the relationship between the State and the territories that compose it.
A lesson that extends beyond Niger alone
This articulation between external sovereignty and internal legitimacy is not unique to Niger; more broadly, it sheds light on the trajectory of all Sahelian countries engaged in similar processes of breaking with the old order. A country always begins by building itself internally before it can hope to command respect abroad. It is an almost universal law of international relations: external predators of all stripes rarely rely on a force of their own; they rely on internal fragilities—social fractures, distrust between the state and communities, flawed governance—too often neglected out of intellectual laziness or communitarian selfishness.
This is why sovereignist slogans, however mobilizing they may be in the moment, will go nowhere until they are understood, appropriated, and carried by all citizens, in their territorial and sociological diversity. Yet, today—here as elsewhere in the region—everything happens as if the people’s will were reduced to the activism of a few loudly speaking voices in the capitals, to the point of stifling any other form of national expression: that of the regions, rural communities, and traditional actors, whose adherence is nonetheless the very condition for the project’s success. Until this equation is solved, proclaimed sovereignty will remain fragile, and the refoundation, unfinished.
Abdoulahi ATTAYOUB
Consultant
Lyon (France), July 21, 2026
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