According to Ajuri Ngelale, special advisor to the presidency on media and publicity, as part of these provisions, the president, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, ordered the end of restrictions on commercial flights to and from Niamey and the reopening of air and land crossings.

Commercial and financial transactions between the two countries, the supply of electricity from this territory to Nigerien areas and the release of Nigerien assets held in central and commercial banks of the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas) are also resumed.

For Ngelale, the decision of the Abuja Executive is in line with decisions adopted last February at a meeting in Abuja by the Authority of Heads of State and Government of the sub-regional organization.

On that occasion, the Ecowas leaders agreed to withdraw economic and financial sanctions against a group of territories where military uprisings have taken place in recent times, among them Burkina Faso, Guinea, Mali and Niger itself, according to the digital portal News.ng.

In the case of Niger, that African territory, with a population estimated at more than 25 million inhabitants, on July 26 last year a military coup d’état removed the then president, Mohamed Bazoum, from power.

The current military junta in Niger, considered the world’s seventh largest producer of uranium, the fuel most used in nuclear energy, carried out the violent action, in a context in which in this African country, as in others in the region, anti-colonialist sentiment is growing against Western powers, among them France, due to the accentuated past of plundering natural resources.

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