Nearly two weeks after the military took over power in Niger, the coup plotters have named former economy minister Ali Mahaman Lamine Zeine as the country’s new prime minister.
A spokesman for the military junta made the announcement on television late Monday night.
Lamine Zeine was formerly the minister of economy and finance for several years in the cabinet of then-president Mamadou Tandja.
DailyNews24 reports that Tandja, who led the country from 1999 after its return to civilian was ousted in 2010.
The caretaker government, which calls itself the National Council for the Safeguarding of the Country, appointed economist Ali Mahamane Lamine Zeine, according to a decree by Gen. Abdourahmane Tchiani, the former commander of Niger’s presidential guard, who declared himself the head of a transitional government.
Zeine currently serves as the African Development Bank’s Country Manager for Chad.
Zeine, who previously served at the same institution and position in Ivory Coast and Gabon, is expected to lead consultations for the formation of a new government.
At the end of July, the military ousted the democratically elected president, Mohamed Bazoum, and suspended the constitution in the country of 26 million inhabitants.
Under Bazoum, Niger had been one of the last strategic partners of the West in the fight against the advance of Islamist terrorists in the Sahel.
An ultimatum from the Economic Community of West African States to the coup plotters to reinstate Bazoum expired over the weekend.
Otherwise, ECOWAS would take measures that could include force, the ultimatum said.
The prime ministers of the ECOWAS member states will now meet in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja, on Thursday to discuss how to proceed.
(dpa/NAN)
