Niger under Tiani: can a simple decree strip you of your citizenship?

In Niger, nationality has become a privilege that can be revoked at the whim of the ruler. Since the military takeover by the National Council for the Safeguard of the Homeland (CNSP) in July 2023, the crackdown on dissidents and dissenting voices has crossed a dangerous threshold. General Abdourahamane Tiani no longer settles for silencing opponents through prison or exile: he now erases their legal existence. By turning citizenship revocation into a systematic tool of governance, the military junta in Niamey is enforcing a dangerous doctrine in which political disagreement amounts to high treason.

A repressive legal framework built for authoritarianism

The repressive arsenal was reinforced in late August 2024 when General Tiani signed an ordinance establishing a “National Register of Persons Involved in Acts of Terrorism or Threats to State Security.” Behind this catch-all label and the convenient pretext of counterterrorism lies a legal guillotine aimed at the political class, civil society, and the military.

The most toxic provision of this mechanism allows for the temporary or permanent revocation of Nigerien nationality against anyone suspected of “activities likely to disturb peace and security,” “regionalist or xenophobic remarks,” or “collusion with a foreign power.” These deliberately vague criteria turn any protest cry or simple editorial critique into grounds for national repudiation.

• Step 1: Creation of the “Threats to Security” register (August 2024)
• Step 2: Asset freezes and travel bans for opponents
• Step 3: Presidential decrees revoking citizenship
• Step 4: Confiscation of ID documents and fabrication of legal statelessness

An ever-growing blacklist

The Niamey regime’s target list expands with each presidential decree. Waves of expulsions methodically target the entourage of deposed President Mohamed Bazoum, former ministers, and key protest figures.

Alongside these major political figures, civil society actors, media activists such as Mariama Djibrine (known as Mayra), and former senior military officers have seen their identity confiscated by simple executive decree. With a stroke of a pen, men and women born on Nigerien soil, who served the country for decades, find themselves administratively banished, turned into virtual stateless persons, stripped of passports, bank accounts, and all civic rights.

The patriotic illusion of a runaway regime

The CNSP’s rhetoric rests on a permanent mystification: the deliberate confusion between the nation and the military power in place. For General Tiani, challenging the junta equals betraying Niger. This populist stance seeks to flatter the population’s sovereigntist sentiment while masking the total absence of political prospects and the deteriorating security situation in the three-border zone.

In reality, this purge through citizenship betrays deep nervousness. A power confident in its popular legitimacy and territorial control does not need to hand out patriotism certificates or manufacture stateless persons to rule. By hermetically sealing off channels of republican dialogue and confiscating the nationality of its opponents, the junta only hardens resentment and pushes dissent toward clandestinity or armed action.

A blatant violation of international commitments

On the international legal front, the Tiani government’s decisions directly violate the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, whose Article 15 clearly states that “everyone has the right to a nationality” and that “no one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality.” By applying these sanctions retroactively, extrajudicially, and without the guarantee of a fair trial before an independent court, the Nigerien authorities flout the regional and international conventions that Niger has signed.

Legal experts and human rights organizations are sounding the alarm: by creating a precedent where nationality becomes a reward for loyalty to an authoritarian regime, the CNSP weakens the very notion of citizenship. If being Nigerien now depends on the goodwill of the junta leader, the entire republican edifice collapses.

An autocratic drift with no way out

By turning nationality into a political adjustment variable, Abdourahamane Tiani’s regime shows its true face: that of an autocracy in a runaway spiral, incapable of tolerating the slightest contradiction. Depriving people of identity will neither lower the price of basic commodities in Niamey nor restore security in the Liptako-Gourma region.

History teaches that regimes that strip their citizens of their papers out of fear of debate always end up losing their own legitimacy. General Tiani would do well to remember that a people’s identity is rooted far more deeply than a military decree, however peremptory it may be.

By Marguerite Ndongo — Political and Security Analyst