and niger's issoufou said, i'm not going to do that. i'm not going to go on forever.e had my two terms. i will designate who i would like in my party to succeed me, my defense minister, bazoum. so, when that handover went over relatively well, a lot of people were pretty hardened for the region. i will tell you something else let happened in 2021, and that was the death of another president, who was doing a lot of the heavy lifting. niger was the only one doing that wrong. it is a matter of huge question marks. sohail: let's talk about security, move the conversation on. we have a good sense of what is going on in niger. we have seen western forces pulled out of countries, security partners in mali, for example. the u.s. is on the back foot, so is france, dealing with the insurgencies, trying to help its african friends. we are seeing russia come in as an alternative to the failures of various military operations. how do you assess the situation right now in terms of importance of niger, where the u.s. and france do have troops? kabir: the geopolitics of the western n

and he's a close ally of the former president mahamadoi issoufou, who faced a thwarted coup in 2021.oup has been roundly condemned by international bodies including the african union, west african regional bloc, the eu and the united nations. it's the latest in a wave of military takeovers that have hit the west african region in recent years, toppling governments in countries including mali, guinea and burkina faso. niger's elected president, mohamed bazoum, is still being detained. it's reported that president bazoum spoke to the french president emmanuel macron early on friday and told him that he was "in good health". i spoke earlier to our reporter chris ewokor, who is monitoring events from neighbouring nigeria. after the announcement of declaring himself the president of the transitional council in niger today. well, there have been a lot of frantic efforts and, of course, reactions across the world. in nigeria, for instance, the president, tinubu bola ahmed tinubu, who is the chairman of the heads of government, has now called an emergency meeting of the heads of state to hol