The Niger junta has received a warning from the United States of America that they risk being pressured into a military conflict if they do not restore constitutional order.
On Tuesday, 8 August, acting US Deputy Secretary Victoria Nuland revealed this during a special briefing on Niger by teleconference.
She uttered:Regarding the direction that the governance crisis will take, there is still a lot of movement here on many different fronts.
We will therefore be paying great attention to that, and we also need to speak with allies and partners and hold a number of regional meetings that are coming up.
We will therefore be monitoring the situation, but we are also aware of our legal obligations, which I made very clear to the Niger junta members who were in charge of this. We have asked them to exercise caution in this regard and to consider our offer to try to cooperate with them in order to resolve this diplomatically and restore constitutional order, as we do not wish to go there.
President Tinubu, the head of ECOWAS, as well as numerous other European friends, have all been in frequent communication with US Vice President Joe Biden, according to Nuland.
Along with President Tinubu of Nigeria, who is currently in charge of ECOWAS, Chairperson Faki of the AU, and a number of European allies with whom we cooperate in Niger, particularly on counterterrorism, he has also maintained constant contact.
It was difficult to see the current threat to the democratic order that started on July 26 because all of this was rooted in our common values, including a sense of democracy, she emphasised.
