Niger Republic: Junta Names Ex-Cabinet Member Prime Minister

This comes nearly two weeks after the military took overpower in country.

A former economy minister Ali Mahaman Lamine Zeine has now been announced as the country’s new prime minister.

A spokesman for the military junta made the announcement on television late Monday night.

Mr. Lamine Zeine was formerly the minister of economy and finance for several years in the cabinet of then-President Mamadou Tandja, ousted in 2010, and most recently worked as an economist for the African Development Bank in Chad, according to a Nigerien media report.

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 Mr 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 ECOWAS to the coup plotters to reinstate Mr Bazoum expired on Sunday.

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)