Former Niger Prime Minister Ouhoumoudou Mahamadou speaks to the media in Paris, August 1, 2023.
(Nairobi) – Niger’s junta has provisionally stripped five more exiled opposition figures of their nationality, extending a controversial policy increasingly used against critics of the military authorities, Human Rights Watch said today.
On September 17, 2026, Gen. Abdourahamane Tiani, who has led Niger’s junta since the July 2023 coup, signed a decree removing the nationality of five prominent Nigeriens living in exile. The decree derives authority from a 2024 order creating a national terrorism database with overbroad inclusion criteria and inadequate due process requirements and safeguards for redress. The order jeopardizes privacy and data protection rights and increases the risk of statelessness.
“The Niger junta’s use of a terrorism database to deprive people of their nationality without any meaningful legal safeguards raises serious human rights concerns,” said Ilaria Allegrozzi, senior Sahel researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Nationality is a fundamental legal status, not a privilege that governments can take from people for political reasons.”
The five affected are former Prime Minister Ouhoumoudou Mahamadou; Amadou dit Ange Barou Chekaraou, Oumarou Moussa Ibrahim, and Ousmane Abdoul Moumouni, all former advisers to President Mohamed Bazoum, who was ousted in 2023 and remains arbitrarily detained; and Boubacar Seyni Souley, a social media activist critical of the junta.
The September 17 decree accuses the men of various offenses, including disseminating information capable of disturbing public order, providing intelligence to foreign powers, electronic defamation, demoralizing the armed forces, and threatening state security.
The decree raises questions about compliance with Niger’s existing legal framework. The 1984 Nationality Code does not provide
