In Niger, the national director of the BCEAO was arrested last Tuesday in Niamey. According to our information, Maman Laouali Abdou Rafa is currently in the hands of the external security services. The Nigerien authorities have not given any reason to justify this arrest. This is the second time that the local director of the BCEAO has been arrested since the July 26 coup. In the background: the suspension of cash payments to the State of Niger following economic sanctions against it.
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It was only a few days after the coup that Maman Laouali Abdou Rafa was arrested for the first time in Niamey while a group of women, close to the CNSP junta, demonstrated in front of the BCEAO to demand the lifting of sanctions.
The arrest of the local director of the regional bank will only last one night. Until the second arrest that occurred three days ago, again without any explanation from the authorities, even if sources within the banking establishment confide to RFI that the junta is seeking to put pressure on the BCEAO which sits in Dakar .
Frozen assets
Since the putsch at the end of July, the financial institution has frozen the assets of Niger’s government and public companies. It no longer injects liquidity into state accounts, only the country’s commercial banks continue to collect sums amounting on average to 400 billion CFA francs (610 million euros) per week, allowing citizens to access their money and the country’s economy to operate at a minimum despite the sanctions.
For the CNSP, the stakes are high, particularly for the payment of civil servants’ salaries which has come after that of the military since the coup d’état.