Introduction
At the cornerstone ceremony for the country’s first oil refinery in late 2008, the political entourage of then Nigerien president Mamadou Tandja launched tazarce (Hausa for ‘continuation’ or ‘continuity’), a campaign to change the constitution to allow his re-election. In the national tazarce narrative, not only in bringing oil production to Niger, Tandja had finally succeeded where others before him had failed, but the constitutional change was also promoted as the democratic ‘will of the people’. As a reaction to tazarce, the Nigerien political elite united against the attempt to centralise power, calling on the international community to implement sanctions against Tandja’s regime. With international sanctions in place, on 18 February 2010, Commander Salou Djibo overthrew Tandja in a military coup. Claiming to an international audience that he wanted to make Niger an example of democracy and good governance, Djibo’s internal political practices were clearly directed against the former regime. Within a year, Djibo organised new elections, with Mahamadou Issoufou from the opposition coming to power in March 2011. Issoufou promised the international community good governance and implemented anti-corruption measures. However, while he promised the Nigerien population an equal distribution of oil revenues for everyone to benefit, his political practices were strongly focused on the destruction of the political opposition and rewarding loyal political followers.
In this article, following Bierschenk and Olivier de Sardan’s (2014) proposal on how to analyse African states, I consider political representations and practices of three Nigerien presidents, Tandja, Djibo and Issoufou. I contextualise their representations of ‘seeing the state’ in terms of their political rhetoric in speeches with their concrete practices of ‘doing the state’ in terms of their political programmes and the distribution of resources and political positions (Ibid.). Based on theoretical sampling, I selected speeches of three consecutive Nigerien presidents at the beginning of the country’s oil production that were addressed to national or international audiences or to both simultaneously. Moreover, I selected those speeches that – based on my subjective experience of long-term fieldwork in Niger – gained particular attention in the country due to either the international significance of the event (high-level Franco-Nigerien talks, speech in front of the United Nations (UN) assembly and the presidential inauguration speech) or their national significance, with people in Niger repeatedly referring to and exchanging the registered speeches via Bluetooth on their mobile phones.
As probably a universal feature of politics everywhere, I show that in Niger all three presidents addressed international audiences in a different way than they did their national audiences. In particular, while the international audience is addressed in terms of human rights, democracy and good governance, and calls for development aid and foreign investments, the national audience is addressed in terms of a redistribution of resources, Western neocolonial interference and calls for patriotism. I thus argue that politics in Niger (as elsewhere) are generally characterised by a logic of ‘code-switching’ (Rottenburg 2009) between a ‘meta-code’ and ‘extroverted’ game to secure international financial flows, and a ‘cultural code’ and ‘introverted’ game to access political positions, public markets and bribes. However, accusations of neocolonialism can also be deployed in extroverted talk to blackmail international patrons for rents, especially if presidents feel in a position of strength. Such a logic of code-switching makes the case for an interpretation of African agency, politics and (under)development that follows neither a simplified logic of neocolonial dependency nor culturalist and national-container models of (neo)patrimonialism and neoliberal good governance. Rather, as both introverted and extroverted forces are simultaneously at play, the findings make a case to take ‘African agency’ in international relations seriously (Anderson and Patterson 2017; Beswick and Hammerstad 2013; Fisher 2018; Lonsdale 2000).
To make my argument, I first turn to the literature on African politics, agency and (under)development before I briefly introduce the political economy of oil-age Niger. I then analyse the political rhetoric and practices of the three consecutive Nigerien presidents before I conclude on my findings, pointing to a trade-off between acquiring financial resources and political legitimacy in the international and the national sphere.
African politics, agency and (under)development
Most commonly, academics have sought to explain common aspects among African states using the ‘introverted’ neopatrimonial state model. While pioneered by Eisenstadt (1973), Médard (1982) was the first to use this model to describe the conflation of the private and the public in African political administration. The notion of neopatrimonialism draws explicitly on Weber’s ideal types of authority, and refers to the coexistence of patrimonial informal logics and formal legal-rational bureaucratic logics. The neopatrimonial model thereby portrays African politics as a deviation from idealised modern Western democracies, these deviations being caused by traditional African elements. Compared to Western states, it thus often sees African statehood as ‘weak’, ‘limited’ or even ‘failed’. The prime reason for the differences between Africa and the West is thereby typically understood as lying inside African societies, often in a somehow opaque notion of ‘culture’ (see especially Chabal and Daloz 1999).
The concept of neopatrimonialism has three main problems: ethnocentrism, empirical weakness and a national-container model that ignores questions of international political economy (Hauck et al. 2013). First, although most Africanist scholars share an understanding of African politics as characterised by a plurality of norms – private and public, formal and informal – that coexist alongside one another, based as it is on Weber’s ideal types of ‘Western realities’ and ‘African deviations’ of these types, the neopatrimonialist paradigm is fundamentally ethnocentric, as it fails to acknowledge that clientelism, corruption and cronyism are also part of politics in the West (although often in a different form, not so much in its petty appearance but more as high-level politico-economic entanglements). Second, neopatrimonialism has become a catch-all concept that does not resolve the ‘problem of specificity’ (Erdmann and Engel 2007). It lacks an empirically grounded concept of culture explaining the mechanisms behind clientelist structures instead of black-boxing them (Olivier de Sardan 2014). Third, the concept pursues a methodological nationalism that is blind to history and unequal international political economy (Bayart 2000). Thus, instead of simplistically ascribing the coexistence of different norms to ‘African culture’, ‘normative double-binds’ might better be explained as a result of the historical sedimentation of colonial and postcolonial practices into a fragmented socio-political order (Bierschenk 2014).
A quite similar introverted perspective to that of neopatrimonialism is taken by the neoliberal good governance paradigm to explain (under)development in Africa. This currently dominating paradigm (in political science and economics) shifts the blame away from international domination or market failures solely to the ‘poor performance’ or ‘bad governance’ of African states. With regard to oil production, for example, ‘governance’ has become the most important factor in explaining the occurrence of the ‘resource curse’,1 with ‘good governance’ becoming the solution to turn the ‘curse’ into a ‘blessing’ (Humphreys, Sachs, and Stiglitz 2007; for such a review see Heinrich and Pleines 2012).
On the other side of the analytic introverted–extroverted continuum lies the important critique of unequal international power relations and finance as neocolonialism. First formulated for Africa by former president of Ghana Kwame Nkrumah (1960–1966), from this perspective foreign capital is used for the exploitation rather than for the development of the former colonies (Nkrumah 1965). By arguing that ‘the West’ has ‘underdeveloped’ Africa, African agency, however, is either neglected or said to be non-existent (Rodney 1972). While there are several varieties of economic theories of neocolonialism, such as dependency theory (Raffer and Singer 2001) or world system theory (Wallerstein 1974), theories of neocolonialism have also been extended to forms of a colonialisation of consciousness (Comaroff and Comaroff 2002). While such critical theories remained rather disconnected from the general debates in disciplines such as international relations, which was for a long time simply not interested in theorising Africa in the world system, the ending of the Cold War posed new challenges to international relations theory (Engel and Olsen 2005). Still, international relations had for a long time taken global power structures for granted in explaining the weak position of Africa as a whole in the international system. Only recently, scholars have started to challenge this narrative by focusing empirically on the extent of ‘African agency’, pointing, for example, to how African leaders instrumentalise a position of weakness in order to tap into international financial flows (Anderson and Patterson 2017; Beswick and Hammerstad 2013; Fisher 2018; Lonsdale 2000).
Taken together, introverted and extroverted perspectives are not incompatible but rather two sides of the same coin. Clapham (2004 [1996]) was one of the first to note that African elites do have a certain degree of agency in instrumentalising external agendas to their own benefit. Similarly, Bayart, whose early work on ‘la politique du ventre’ (Bayart 1989) was clearly focused on the introverted clientelist logics in Africa, has extended his analysis of African politics in his later work, which is explicitly named ‘extraversion’ (Bayart 2000). In contrast to the literature on neopatrimonialism, Bayart (2000) starts from the premise that politics in Africa are not different from politics elsewhere in the world. Rather than focusing on culture as an or the explanatory variable, theorists adopting this perspective see history and the political economy as the most important factor in explaining social inequalities, clientelism and corruption. For Bayart, one important historical trajectory of African political economy, which is said to have led to political domination, economic accumulation and conflict in African states, is ‘a whole series of rents generated by Africa’s insertion in the international economy in a mode of dependence’ (1999, xvi). These rents include colonial and postcolonial exploitation of natural resources such as uranium or oil, as well as external financial aid. Bayart (2000) has argued that instead of being dependent on the West per se, Africa has rather made itself dependent on access to these rents. However, ‘occasionally the puppets pull the strings’ (Bayart 2009, 26) – for example, when African presidents use accusations of neocolonialism to blackmail their international patrons for rents.
To empirically assess the agency of African elites, Niger is a case in point as development indices have continuously labelled it ‘the poorest country in the world’. Moreover, analysing political rhetoric of three consecutive Nigerien presidents from 2009 to 2011 shows the performative character of the above-mentioned theories of African agency, politics and (under)development, as these theories are explicitly taken up in talking politics.
The political economy of oil-age Niger
Niger is characterised by cycles of drought and famine, strong population growth, scarce arable land and degraded fertile soil. Niger also has low levels of productivity and technology and is highly dependent on foreign investment and development aid. These economic characteristics have a long history, and remain largely unchanged, even today (Charlick 1991, 89). The economic policy of the French coloniser – who had long classified Niger as Afrique inutile – was purely exploitative, and aimed at keeping administrative costs to a minimum. Thus, the colonial government made little to no investment in infrastructure development. Even today, infrastructure development in postcolonial Niger remains largely dependent on foreign investment.
Due to its harsh environment and landlocked position, Niger has seen little oil-exploration activity (Augé 2011). The first oil explorations in Niger started as early as 1958 – while it was still a French colony – following the discovery of oil in neighbouring Algeria in 1956. Oil was first found in Niger by Texaco and Esso in 1975 in the Agadem oil block, located in the far east of the country (Diffa region). With the oil explorations and the first positive discoveries becoming known in political circles and at least among parts of the Nigerien population in the eastern region of Diffa, the start of oil production was anticipated over three decades before it actually began; it was in fact uranium, and not oil, that first took centre stage in postcolonial Niger.
For a long time, Niger’s political configuration was profoundly shaped by uranium production (Grégoire 2011). The presence of uranium had already been confirmed by 1956 when Niger was still a French colony. The French considered Niger’s uranium of geostrategic importance, both for securing France’s energy supply and for its potential use in nuclear weapons. As a result, the French state forcefully intervened in Niger’s postcolonial transition in 1960 when it became independent under the first Nigerien president Hamani Diori (van Walraven 2009). Through the elimination and cooptation of political opponents, Niger – with the help of France – soon turned into an authoritarian regime (Ibid.).
In post-colonial Niger, then, political conflicts have always gone hand in hand with the political economy of the country (Robinson 1991). The period under Diori (1960–1974) largely coincided with the phase of export-oriented groundnut production, which, together with livestock production, accounted for 65.5% of Niger’s exports in 1972 (Grégoire 2011, VI). The boom in groundnut sales in the early 1960s gave Diori the financial capital to build clientelist networks and to consolidate his position within the party through the appropriation and distribution of state revenues among the political class (Robinson 1991, 6). From 1968 onwards, shrinking revenues from groundnut production led to the disintegration of Diori’s clientelist base, and internal conflicts within his party began to emerge. The impossibility of keeping up with the high costs of clientelism, exacerbated by the drought of 1973, led to Diori being overthrown in a military coup by Lieutenant Colonel Seyni Kountché, who ruled the country as military head of state until his death in 1987.
The beginning of uranium mining in Niger in 1971 brought a radical change in the country’s political economy. The boom in uranium exports since 1974/1975 led to the decline of Nigerien groundnut production – a phenomenon known as ‘Dutch Disease’ (The Economist 1977). In the following years, uranium mining generated unexpected financial resources for the Nigerien government. In 1982, uranium accounted for more than 80% of the country’s exports and 50% of state revenue (Grégoire 2011, VI). As Diori had done with the groundnut revenues, President Kountché also redistributed the uranium revenues as a means of remaining in power. His military regime established a ‘development society’ based on uranium revenues, and announced a series of ambitious development goals (Robinson 1991, 9). The beneficiaries of Kountché’s development programmes were primarily civil servants, administrative chiefs, wage earners and traders, groups that would have to be appeased when the revenue from uranium exports suddenly collapsed in the 1980s (Robinson 1991, 10; Gervais 1997).
With shrinking uranium revenues, external debt accumulated. In such a context, external pressure from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, particularly through the structural adjustment programmes (SAPs), and internal pressure from student and labour unions finally led the military regime of Ali Saibou, who took over after Kountché’s death, to agree to a National Conference, and following the conference a multiparty system was enacted in 1993. The multiparty system changed the rules of the game, bringing with it political competition, businessmen investing in politics for economic advantage and favours, civil society activism and media pluralism (Olivier de Sardan 2016). With the new rules of the game in place, multiparty politics gave rise to a decade of experimentation and repeated breakdowns in the institutional order, with several military coups switching the constitution back and forth between presidential and semi-presidential regimes (Villalón and Idrissa 2005), until the regime of Mamadou Tandja (1999–2010) saw some stability, with debt relief and foreign aid becoming some of the most important external revenue sources (Dorlöchter-Sulser 2014, 137–149).
It was within this social and political constellation that an oil production-sharing agreement including the construction of an oil refinery on Niger territory was signed in June 2008 between the Nigerien government under Mamadou Tandja and the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC). For concluding the contract, the CNPC paid the Nigerien government a US$300 million bonus. CNPC and the Nigerien government under Tandja agreed on a division of oil profits of 40% for Niger and 60% for CNPC. The profits of CNPC are taxed at a 12.5% ad valorem royalty. Government revenues from the integrated oil project have since 2012 exceeded the annual revenues from uranium extraction by French parastatal Areva (the 2001 successor of French parastatal Compagnie générale des matières nucléaires, COGEMA) which have made Niger the world’s fourth largest uranium producer. According to the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) campaign, the extractive sector currently contributes 23% of total state revenues in Niger (https://eiti.org/niger). In addition, in the context of a growing instability of the Sahel–Saharan region and the EU’s fight against both terrorism and irregular migration, net official development assistance for Niger has doubled from about US$644 million since Mahamadou Issoufou’s coming to power in 2011 to US$1223 billion in 2017 (https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/DT.ODA.ODAT.CD?locations=NE).
The terms of Mamadou Tandja (1999–2010)
On 27 October 2008, the cornerstone ceremony for the oil refinery in Zinder region was held. Coinciding with the ceremony, President Tandja’s campaign for constitutional change was launched. Tazarce would alter the regime from semi-presidential to presidential, and allow the president an extra three-year transitional term and the possibility of putting himself up for re-election: his presidency officially ended in 2009 after two mandates, as specified in the Nigerien Constitution of the Fifth Republic. After the launch of the campaign, government supporters led demonstrations and appeared in shows on state television and radio stations throughout the country. The tazarce campaign followed a tight script with three key messages: first, that it was the will of the Nigerien people that the constitution be changed so that Tandja could remain in office; second, that the development of Nigerien oil and uranium was intimately connected with the person of Tandja; and, third, that a move to a presidential regime was better suited to Nigerien culture (Baudais and Chauzal 2011). The campaign’s fundamental message was simple: losing Tandja as president at this decisive moment of history would bring instability to Niger, threatening its oil project and indeed its entire development. With civil society associations proclaiming the message of tazarce, the Nigerien people’s will would be made a political reality. In return for their support, Tandja gave these civil society activists seats on the various governmental bodies that had emerged with political liberalisation in the 1990s (Abdoul Azizou 2010).
With the tazarce campaign gathering momentum, Tandja himself kept silent in public until French president Nicolas Sarkozy’s visit to Niamey on 27 March 2009, where Niger signed a new uranium contract with Areva over the development of the new uranium mine, Imouraren.
In 2007, in a position of strength, Tandja’s government had accused France and Areva of instigating and financing the third Tuareg rebellion of the country (2007–2009),2 and expelled Areva’s head of operations in July of the same year. Two reasons accounted for his position of strength: first, with the world financial crisis, the spot price of uranium had skyrocketed from US$45/pound in mid June 2006 to US$136/pound in June 2007; and, second, as part of a diversification policy to triple uranium production within the next few years, Tandja’s government had granted new exploitation licences to companies from the United States, South Africa, China, Canada and Australia (Keenan 2008). Producing a narrative of neocolonial interference to blackmail for higher uranium rents provoked the direct intervention of French president Nicolas Sarkozy. High-level Franco–Nigerien talks calmed the situation and led to an agreement between Areva and Niger on 1 August 2007. In order not to lose its largest uranium supplier, Areva agreed to increase the price for yellowcake laid down in the secret contracts that had existed since colonialism, and to make some yellowcake available for Niger to sell itself (Hecht 2010, 18). Areva increased royalty payments from 27,300 FCFA (€42) per kg of uranium to 40,000 FCFA (€61) per kg of uranium, and provided 300 tons of uranium for Niger to sell on the open market.
Two years later, in 2009, Sarkozy took the opportunity to pay tribute to Niger’s ‘democracy’, recalling that the only period of stability in the 15 years of Nigerien democracy was that of the two terms of President Tandja. Presenting himself to a national and international audience, Tandja then proclaimed (in French):
President Tandja is able to fully explain and speak in the clearest possible manner, so that everyone may understand the situation in Niger today. I sincerely respect our constitution. I grew up with military regulations, I came to know the laws and regulations of my country as a soldier. I entered politics and I came to know what the constitution is. I love democracy and I have done a lot for it. Today, I am president of the republic, having won two mandates in accordance with the constitution. Here, I end my two mandates. Growing up for me is to leave with your head high. If the table is cleared, you have to leave. It is not about searching for another mandate. I have always been clear on this. I have never asked any Nigerien at any time if they can do this or that – never! And I will never do it – asking if they could change the Nigerien constitution for me or search for modifications to our constitution: I would keep it as it is, I prefer it like this until the end! Now, for the good of the Nigerien people, the regions rose up in order to say: ‘Allow President Tandja three more years to complete the great construction sites that he has started, for reasons of stability and for reasons to complete what is programmed.’ It’s the business of the people and of the assembly and not for Tandja. Tandja would neither talk to the assembly’s president nor to anyone else in order to say to the assembly to take care of the issue. That’s not my business, but it is up to them [i.e. the Nigerien people and the assembly] to know what to do. I’m ready to quit tomorrow. The 22nd of December, it’s the end of my mandate. Goodbye, I retire and thank you!3
On the one hand, Tandja’s explicit awareness of the ‘democracy’ discourses (free elections, human rights, freedom of opinion and freedom of the press, etc.) underlying Western political rationalities reminds us that the extroverted speech was clearly aimed at an international audience. Sitting next to Sarkozy, he presented himself as a democratic leader who could do nothing but follow the will of the Nigerien people and the assembly. With the new agreement between Areva and Niger from August 2007 in place, Sarkozy in return assured Tandja that France would continue its neutrality concerning internal Nigerien national politics (Grégoire 2010). Sarkozy’s reassurance had thereby bolstered Tandja’s position inside Niger. On the other hand, however, Tandja’s understanding of democracy does not appear to revolve around the constitution (and the two-term presidential limit) but rather a desire to follow ‘the people’s will’. As the speech extract shows, Tandja does not completely deny any constitutional change, but rather highlights that such a change is the responsibility of the Nigerien assembly and the population as a whole. Here, Tandja reiterates the main themes of the campaign that he and he alone could complete what he had started. Moreover, he reiterates that electoral change would bring instability and threaten the oil and uranium projects. In other words, Tandja was trying to deny any personal involvement in the campaign for constitutional change to prove that tazarce was ‘the will of the people’, and to maintain social and political order in Niger for as long as possible.
If extraversion is a common characteristic of the African state, so too is its opposite, introversion. That is, the political reality of African states is characterised by ‘code switching’ (Rottenburg 2005) between an extroverted script or hegemonic ‘meta-code’, and an introverted script or ‘cultural code’, depending on the ‘bazaar situation’ in which political actors find themselves at the time – that is, negotiations either with international donors about foreign investment and development aid or with domestic clients about a redistribution of resources and political positions. In a bazaar situation to secure financial flows from the outside, Nigerien politicians change into the meta-code dominated by Western political rationalities of good governance and transparency and a particular Western understanding of liberal representative democracy (multiparty systems, and freedoms of the press, speech and human rights). However, in a bazaar situation of internal redistributions of rents, public markets and political positions, political actors switch into a cultural code, a vernacular understanding of democracy through which they try to address the needs and desires of their national population to acquire legitimacy. The spread of multiparty systems and democratic constitutions around the world, therefore, does not necessarily lead to the emergence of democratic principles. Rather, it should shift our attention to how the language of democracy has been translated by political authorities in different cultural contexts (Schaffer 2000). Here, the concept of ‘vernacularisation’ (Michelutti 2007) has been used to show how the idea of democracy has become subjectivised and transformed by being embedded in social and cultural practices, not necessarily of political authorities, but first of all of ordinary people in the global South. I turn to these notions now.
On 4 May 2009, over six months after the public launch of tazarce, and a few weeks after his meeting with Sarkozy, Tandja finally confirmed his intention to change the constitution. As a response, the political elite firmly united against Tandja’s attempt to centralise power. On 16 July 2009, the political opposition joined with several labour unions and civil society associations to form a ‘movement for democracy’, the Coordination des Forces pour la Démocratie et la République (CFDR). As constitutional change would have allowed Tandja to stand for re-election repeatedly, it posed a threat to the political class, who feared losing their access to the ‘rent of political liberalisation’ that had emerged with the multiparty system. That is, multiparty politics have allowed a small civilian political elite to stay in power in ever-changing alliances between different political factions and major merchants (Olivier de Sardan 2017). In doing so, they have taken possession of state resources through political postings, systematic corruption, the embezzlement of funds, tax favours and the distribution of public markets. Rather than questioning Tandja’s image of pragmatism and nationalism, the opposition decided to play the extroverted ‘democracy card’ by speaking of a ‘coup d’état constitutionnel’ (Coordination des Forces pour la Démocratie et la République [CFDR] 2009). Addressing the international community, the opposition organised pro-democracy demonstrations and called for sanctions against Niger. Then, opposition leader Mahamadou Issoufou even called for military intervention. The strategy worked, with international sanctions against the Tandja government soon announced: namely, suspension by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and suspension of economic partnerships with the European Union, the IMF, the World Bank and many Western countries.
Indicating his determination to stay in power with the help of China after the conclusion of the oil contract, Tandja reacted to the international sanctions with a nationalist discourse, stating that ‘there are two strings to his bow, if one should break, there is always the other’ (Grégoire 2010). In an introverted speech in the Diffa region on 18 December 2009, Tandja reacted to the political opposition and international sanctions by addressing the population (in Hausa):
My thanks to all those present here. Men and women, young and old, we got what we have wanted for 51 years. It is thanks to God that we have oil in Diffa and it is thanks to him that we have gathered here in Diffa […]. Currently there are many rumours circulating in our country. I would like to tell you what is really happening before leaving here today […] I have played the same games that past presidents have played. Now it is time to work, because at my age I should react on the basis of calculation, to advance my country by implementing the projects that I have promised my people. This is my only goal. I want first of all to see our country actually produce oil. In this way, even after my death, you will say that this has been achieved in my time […]. In terms of uranium, we have always been given what they [Areva, ‘the French’ or ‘the West’ in general] want – sometimes five billion FCFA, sometimes four billion FCFA. I said ‘No’ to that. I said that from now on both of us will have our fair share. Thus, I will review all uranium treaties and, if they refuse, I will launch an international tender. For these reasons, the people who are responsible for this [i.e. the unfair distribution of the uranium profits] are those who tell the Africans to overthrow me if they find an opportunity. You [the political opposition in Niger and ECOWAS] tell the West that I became a dictator, but this is normal [i.e. it is appropriate to become independent] because it is my country and I am independent […]. Our brothers who – along with our enemies – seek to sabotage us are wasting their time. Our constitution is ours. It is our opinion, our point of view [the constitutional change]. All the great men of this world [leaders who opposed the West] had problems [with Western interference], but let them do what they do [i.e. they should be allowed to make independent decisions such as constitutional change]. We have our independence and we do what we want […]. Wherever there is oil, there are problems that you have to resist. All the inhabitants of Diffa, I entrust our oil to you. We must pay attention and everyone who is suspect to you – inform us in time. We are working with the Chinese and everyone knows them as soon as they see them, don’t they? When you see someone who is not Chinese you have to inform us to ask what they’re doing. If they come to Niamey we will interrogate them and they will remain in Niamey.4 You have to pay attention; we do what we want with our oil. Everyone manages their own wealth, and we too will do what we want. No one can keep their head held high if they have nothing. This is not the time to blackmail us. Now is the time to work, and we will do what is best for our country.5
Second, Tandja presented himself as a strong leader able to resist neocolonial interference by ending the unfair allocation of uranium revenues. As such, after 51 years of oil exploration in Niger, Tandja claims to have finally prepared the ground for oil production. In response to Niger signing the oil contract with a Chinese company, the CNPC, the West was trying to prevent oil development to maintain Niger’s dependence on them. One of those strategies was interference in national politics, which went so far as to include coups d’état. In referring to the great men, Tandja attempted to align himself with African leaders such as Sankara and Lumumba, who were brought down by the West or with the help of their intelligence agencies, and who have (re)gained significant popularity in Niger (and in Africa more generally). Moreover, with China focusing its diplomatic and ideological efforts on distinguishing itself from ‘Western paternalism’, ‘exploitation’ and ‘neocolonial interference’ by proclaiming ‘equal partnerships’, ‘pragmatism’, ‘win–win relationships’ and ‘non-interference’ (Taylor 2006), Tandja (re)produced and politically exploited the difference between ‘China’ and ‘the West’ for his campaign to justify the renunciation of Western countries, his rapprochement with China and his constitutional amendment to stay in power, and to denounce the political opposition.
The speech is a good example of the logic of code-switching in Nigerien politics. As long as revenues continue to come from the outside, weaker Nigerien political players do not question the hegemonic meta-code of the more powerful Western players, as their money brings material gains (Rottenburg 2009). With sanctions interrupting financial flows from the West, Tandja increasingly articulated and politicised external relations and the conditions of international flows, thus pointing to Niger’s dependency on and exploitation by the West. In this narrative, which fits well into the broader Nigerien vernacular and thereby reproduces it, the West intentionally leaves Africa underdeveloped. The only solution, Tandja is telling his audience, is a strong leader (even a dictator) who is able to stand against Western infiltration.
The term of Salou Djibo (2010–2011)
On 18 February 2010, nearly two years before the first barrel of oil would finally be produced, Tandja was overthrown in a military coup led by Commander Salou Djibo. The military junta immediately suspended the new constitution, dissolved Tandja’s government and all the institutions of the Sixth Republic, and installed a transitional governmental body, the Conseil Suprême pour la Restauration de la Démocratie (CSRD), which was headed by Djibo, who functioned as the head of state. In the junta’s first official declaration, it was announced that they were interested not in political power, but rather in transforming Niger into an example of democracy and good governance (Grégoire 2010). The junta’s external communications were thereby clearly aligned with and well adapted to Western political rationalities. Importantly, the instigators of the coup did not seek to banish party politics or well-established political actors; rather, they offered them the opportunity to re-enter the game after Tandja had monopolised power and threatened their future access to state resources. In this way, the main actors were all interested in regime change and the staging of new elections in a short space of time.
While official international reaction to the coup was both limited and restrained, most major actors verbally condemned it to some degree. Both the AU and ECOWAS temporarily suspended Niger’s membership. Behind closed doors, however, the international community seemed largely to be satisfied and, rather than sharply denouncing the coup, called for a quick transition to democracy. The fact that the international response to the coup was in general muted, with the junta soon being invited to international meetings, suggests that the denunciation was based on principle rather than on fact (van Walraven 2011).
In this sense, one of the junta’s main missions was to reestablish ties with international donors, especially the EU, that had been severed due to tazarce. Therefore, the CSRD soon began preparations for new democratic elections and pointed out that the transitional government would not be eligible to run for office in these elections. And already in May, its main donor, the EU, decided to progressively resume budgetary support for Niger. However, before new elections could be organised, the CSRD argued that they needed to ‘clean up the political situation’ (assainir la situation politique) and to reconcile the nation. Under the slogan ‘assainissement’ (cleansing), the CSRD conducted an anti-corruption purge of politicians and cracked down on several high-ranking government officials, all of these personal appointees of Tandja. With the reconciliation of the nation it seemed that Djibo first of all meant the divisions caused by tazarce or the political competition in multiparty systems more generally. At the end of July, the CRSD organised a ‘mini-conférence nationale’, which was attended by about 200 representatives from Nigerien political parties and civil society. Djibo opened the session by addressing the public debates over the previous weeks. With its introverted character, his speech in French illustrates several important aspects of the Nigerien vernacular around democracy.6
First, in his introduction, Djibo addressed political opponents, accusing them of being absent at his speech, and using the media to denounce his regime instead:
I wanted to meet you this morning to talk to you in person. Since 18 February 2010, there are those who have seen me only on TV, so this is an opportunity to talk face-to-face. I do not see those here who normally talk too much on the radio – I wanted them to be here to speak in front of everyone. We will never hide or shy away from speaking. Once we leave here today, those faces will start screaming on the radio again.
Second, Djibo turned to focus on cleaning up politics:
Some people think that we should not engage in cleansing because everybody is rotten. Yes, everyone is rotten, but there are some who are more rotten than others. We began the cleansing, and we will complete the cleansing, in schā'allāh [if God wills]. You cannot make an omelet without breaking eggs, and if it is required that we break them, we will break them – that is for sure.
Third, Djibo then turned to focus on the proposed electoral code and constitution, which had been drafted by the committee he had appointed and still needed to be approved by the Conseil Consultatif National and the CSRD:
Now, for the electoral code: I am very surprised, very surprised that people talk to me about age and educational level. Age and educational level, who put that? It is you [the political class] and not the CSRD. […] As you are in a hurry to have the power, you are in a hurry to make the electoral code before the constitution which is not normal. That is our problem in Niger.
Fourth, Djibo focused on nepotism in the distribution of political and administrative posts in Niger and refuted critics who argued that his political appointments were clearly based on the infamous PAC – parents, amis et connaissances (family, friends and acquaintances):
The third point Nigeriens are worried about, the majority of politicians, you are talking about the PAC concerning my appointments. You have to tell me, who has appointed someone he does not know? You have to tell me! You should tell me which among the three P, A, and C – help me to add another word. But most importantly, the people who are appointed must work responsibly.
In short, rather than conforming to the diplomatic standards common in extroverted politics performed for an international audience, Djibo’s speech sheds light on the dynamics of introverted Nigerien politics. In analysing the speech, we come to see how democracy, elections, corruption and social networks can be interpreted and understood inside Niger, an understanding that does not conform to the demands of external donors or political powers and is therefore not on show in extroverted displays and rhetoric. With the advent of democracy in Niger in the 1990s, a new political elite was able to establish and secure power for itself. Playing with and (re)defining the rules of the new multiparty politics (Herdt and Olivier de Sardan 2015), anti-corruption purges are part of the introverted political game. Nevertheless, as state resources also come from the outside, let us take a closer look at how Djibo played the extroverted political game.
In September 2010, Djibo spoke at the General Assembly of the United Nations in New York.7 Djibo spoke first about the political situation in Niger, arguing that the military had the obligation to intervene to stop President Tandja’s anti-constitutional behaviour. He repeated the position of the CSRD, that they were not seeking power but wanted to preserve the unity and integrity of the country, asserting that the coup had been welcomed by the Nigerien population. According to Djibo, the four primary objectives of the CSRD were to restore democracy, ‘cleanse’ the political elite, improve the economic situation and achieve national reconciliation. He presented a road map for the transition to democracy and called for urgent international support in the transition process, before emphasising the CRSD’s democratic actions: setting up an anti-corruption commission and a high-level authority for reconciliation, working to consolidate democracy, and making a commitment to ‘universal values of peace, security, good neighborly relations, human rights, the rule of law, democracy and international solidarity’.
After attempting to legitimate the military regime to the member states, Djibo then set about outlining a set of crises that could only be addressed with financial aid from the member states. Djibo first turned to another key issue of the time: food insecurity in Niger. Djibo argued that the Tandja regime had downplayed the gravity of the situation in denying an insecurity, and that Niger was in fact in a food crisis; and he called for international help to gather US$30 million to address the situation. Turning to the subjects of terrorism, drug trafficking and the proliferation of arms in the Sahel–Saharan region, Djibo also called on the international community to immediately strengthen development cooperation, warning that poverty and despair would only serve to fuel terrorism in the region, before stressing that Niger would need substantial financial support from the international community to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Djibo then turned his attention to natural disasters, environmental degradation and climate change, once more calling on international funding to implement countermeasures. Finally, he emphasised his government’s commitment to and achievements in the name of gender equality and the empowerment of women.
As we can see, in contrast to the introverted speech for a national audience in July, Djibo’s extroverted speech at the UN was clearly well adapted to Western political rationalities. The topics were chosen according to an international agenda of development, democracy, terrorism, climate change, human rights and gender equality – topics that played hardly any role in his introverted speech. After stressing Niger’s commitment to ‘universal values’, he underlined the need for international funding and support. As a whole, extroverted speeches and actions in Nigerien politics highlight the centrality of external rents in the functioning of the Nigerien state. To capture these financial flows, Nigerien leaders – like all political leaders to some extent but especially those who are in a weak position internationally – play the game of code-switching by addressing an international audience in a manner different to how they would address a national audience. While Djibo’s introverted speech was characterised by vernacular notions of democracy and corruption, representing the former as disorderly and the latter as an inescapable element of the social fabric, his extroverted speech addressed a Western political understanding of democracy and good governance by implementing mechanisms of transparency and anti-corruption policies to call for international assistance.
The term of Mahamadou Issoufou (from 2011)
Less than one year after seizing power, Djibo had organised new elections, with Mahamadou Issoufou becoming the new president of Niger in April 2011. In his inaugural speech in French in front of an international audience, which was also broadcast on Nigerien state television, he first described the relationship between the exploitation of natural resources and national development, as follows:
Our ambition is the cost reduction of the two most important production factors for a landlocked country: transportation and energy […]. For the second factor, we will exploit all energy sources in our country: water, coal, solar power, wind, oil and nuclear power […] Niger has enormous natural resources that we have to exploit in the interest of our present and future generations. We are open to all foreign investors without any distinction, on condition that they respect our interests, and are willing to establish win–win relationships with us.8
Issoufou then draws parallels to negative significations of resources as ‘curses’, curses that can only be overcome by good governance, as asserted by Humphreys, Sachs and Stiglitz (2007) and cited earlier:
Good governance, particularly transparency, in the resource exploitation sector will be essential. If other countries can finance their industrial development through agricultural surplus, Niger conversely has to finance its economic and social development through surpluses from its mining and oil industries. As a curse in other countries, especially causing wars, I also see how well-distributed oil revenues can bring development for Niger in terms of access to schools, health and water.
In his inaugural speech, Issoufou also addressed the Nigerien population, promising fair distribution of resource revenues to provide better access to education, health care and water. In doing so, Issoufou employed a distributive concept of development that promises material redistributions rather than trickle-down, a concept much closer to the Nigerien vernacular than the neoliberal good governance discourse. The ‘distributive state’ (Vandewalle 1998) of Gaddafi’s Libya, with extensive fuel subsidies and social programmes, enjoyed high popularity in Niger. Similarly, with the beginning of oil production, the population in Niger was starting to demand a share of national wealth. Unlike the occasional distribution of gifts prior to national elections or at commemorative events that are well known in Niger, this wealth was expected to be delivered as ongoing fuel subsidies, in an attempt to make the state beneficent in the public perception. Several labour unions and civil society organisations, for example, protested against a fuel price of XOF579 per litre (€0.88),10 which was deemed too high. However, the protesting labour unions and civil society organisations were denounced by the new Issoufou regime as part of the political opposition. While those civil society associations who had supported tazarce had been removed from governmental bodies by the Issoufou government, they were replaced by those who had supported the former political opposition against Tandja (Schritt 2020). Moreover, the Issoufou government also created so many advisory positions for its supporters, especially university intellectuals, that it became a ‘state of advisors’ (Adji 2014, 370–372).
After the regime change from Tandja to Issoufou, Areva postponed the start of production at the Imouraren uranium mine from 2012 to 2014, then to 2016, and finally indefinitely, claiming that exploitation would not be profitable in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, which had caused the uranium price to crash by 62%. This led to renewed accusations of French neocolonialism within Niger, with students and civil society groups in Niamey in 2013 protesting against the ‘French neocolonial system’. In October 2013, the Nigerien government and Areva started negotiations over the renewal of their uranium contracts, which were due to expire later that year, and in May 2014 Areva and the Nigerien government signed a strategic partnership agreement and set up a joint committee to decide on the start of mining at Imouraren. The Issoufou government sold the agreement as a victory, pointing to an increase in mining royalties from 5.5% to 12% and emphasising Niger’s close relationship with France. However, civil society activists denounced the opacity of the negotiations, arguing that the fact the terms of the agreement had not been made public was evidence of a continuation of neocolonialism. In a weak bargaining position with the uranium price crashing, Issoufou publicly emphasised the good French–Nigerien relations instead of politicising them, which brought him much criticism from within Niger. Nevertheless, although Issoufou’s legitimacy among the Nigerien population was low at the time, he successfully divided and weakened the political opposition by coopting various opposition politicians into this ‘government of national unity’ and was then successfully reelected in 2016.
In a nutshell, Issoufou’s inaugural speech, the processual development of the uranium conflict and the externalisation of the EU border regime illustrate the two different codes used to address an international and a national audience. It is this tightrope-walking between extroverted and introverted political rhetoric and practice that needs to be balanced in two different bazaar situations at once: tapping international financial flows and guaranteeing national political order and social peace.
Conclusion
In analysing political rhetoric and practice in Niger’s political game, this article speaks to the debate on African agency, politics and (under)development by showing the importance of code-switching between an extroverted meta-code and an introverted cultural code. I have shown that Nigerien presidents are highly reliant on tapping international financial flows for which they normally switch to the language of democracy to please their foreign patrons. However, at times when (Nigerien) presidents feel in a position of power, or once international financial flows have been cut, they can produce accusations of neocolonial interference to blackmail international patrons for access to rents or to claim legitimacy within their country. This happened for example in 2007, when the spot price for uranium skyrocketed and an international competition for Niger’s uranium reserves enlarged Tandja’s room for manoeuvre, and in 2009 when foreign aid was cut due to his attempt to effect constitutional change. Attesting to the immediacy of the colonial history of Françafrique, one that often raises questions about surreptitious French involvement in Nigerien politics, such narratives of neocolonialism directed towards their domestic population are quite popular in Niger. However, domestic legitimacy is mostly built on the ability to redistribute resources among the wider population. With Niger having a very tight budget that does not allow for satisfying the needs of a large part of the population or for the building of a social security system, such a redistribution of resources and positions always favours only a small group of supporters, which in turn leads to highly politicised public institutions. As a result, politics in Niger are largely understood among the wider population as a dirty game of rivalry, conflicts and self-enrichment.
Such an analysis questions both the long-standing culturalist paradigm of (neo)patrimonialism and neoliberal good governance in (Western) African studies and the (African) critique of neocolonialism. In analysing and contextualising introverted and extroverted presidential speeches, I have shown that the political game is deeply entangled both in trans-local power relations and financial flows and in internal redistribution patterns of these rents among domestic clients. These relations make code-switching – depending on the introverted or extroverted negotiations – a major characteristic of the political game. Placing Niger in the asymmetric web of transnational relations of the world economy and politics, we should not adhere to absolute viewpoints: neither by overemphasising the claim that African states have forgone their agency by making themselves dependent on international financial flows (Bayart 2000), nor by arguing that African agency has been left null and void by Western domination and dependencies (Rodney 1972). Rather, as African states and their leaders are always inextricably entangled in national and international bazaar situations, agency is invariably deeply relational and polycentric. In this sense, a trade-off emerges: While African states in the international system are structurally in a weaker position, they are indeed able to capitalise on this position in accessing international financial flows, thereby enlarging their internal (financial) room for manoeuvre. Such a political move, however, might give rise to criticism within the country of making a deal with former colonial powers, questioning the government’s political legitimacy in the national sphere. On the other hand, African governments can politicise external relations as neocolonial to blackmail international partners for rents or produce legitimacy in the national sphere. Cuts to international financial flows, however, largely decrease their internal room for manoeuvre, for example in building clientelist networks to stay in power.