Mohamed Bazoum, the democratically elected leader of Niger, claimed that the military junta that overthrew him and is refusing to cede power is keeping him in isolation and making him eat only dry rice and pasta.
Bazoum claimed in a string of texts to a friend—which CNN is alleged to have seen—that he has been “deprived of all human contact” since Friday and that no one has been giving him food or medicine.
Since Nigeria cut off electricity in response to the coup, Bazoum claimed to have been living without it for a week. This is standard for all Nigerien residents.
According to Bazoum, all of the perishable food he was given has since gone bad, so he is currently subsisting on dry pasta and rice.
Bazoum has maintained contact with the outside world despite being denied the opportunity to speak with acting US Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland during her visit to Niamey, the capital of Niger, on Monday. .
The president was in good spirits despite being held in a “catastrophic situation,” the prime minister of Bazoum’s administration, Ouhoumoudou Mahamadou, told French television. “.
Senior coup leaders met with Nuland on Monday for a meeting that lasted more than two hours and featured “extremely frank and at times quite difficult” discussions. The junta abruptly called off a face-to-face meeting with the United Nations and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) that was scheduled to take place in Niamey on Tuesday.
In response to “this atmosphere of threatened aggression against Niger,” Junta leaders wrote that the meeting needed to be postponed. “.
The junta would like to keep talking to ECOWAS, the group that has been leading the regional response to the political crisis in Niger, though, according to Mahamadou, the prime minister of Bazoum, who spoke to French state-funded broadcaster TV5-Monde.
Although the exact details of the meeting are still unknown, ECOWAS leaders are scheduled to meet in Nigeria on Thursday to discuss the coup.
The junta had been given a week by the regional bloc to reinstall Bazoum and return to their barracks, but Sunday came and went without any action.
