Gen. Abdourahamane Tchiani, the commander of Niger's presidential guards unit, was appointed head of state on 28 July by a governing council set up by military forces that ousted President Mohamed Bazoum.
The 62-year-old general is from Niger’s western region of Tillaberic, close to the border with Mali.
He studied at a military academy in Thiès in Senegal and carried out a number of training missions abroad before occupying posts in Niger including commander of the national gendarmerie.
He has served in missions with the United Nations and West African regional bloc Ecowas in Cote d'Ivoire as well as in Sudan.
He was decorated in 1989 for securing the site of a crash near Bilma in northern Niger after a French flight crashed due to a suitcase bomb explosion. All 170 people on board died. Tchiani was the first officer on site.
A former military attaché at Niger’s embassy in Germany, he also served as head of a battalion in Agadez, once seen as the world’s smuggling capital, and often led military operations in the Niger desert against contraband and drug traffickers.
In 2011, Bazoum’s predecessor, president Mahamadou Issoufou, appointed him to lead the presidential guards – a special unit of around 2,000 soldiers.
Then in 2018, Tchiani was promoted to the rank of general.
In March 2021, he reportedly led the unit that blocked another attempted coup, when a military unit tried to seize the presidential palace a few days before Bazoum was due to be sworn in.
When Bazoum took office 2021, he kept the general as head of the presidential guards.
A few months ago, he was decorated by president Bazoum “for fully taking on all his responsibilities with a spirit of devotion, self-sacrifice, availability and loyalty,” reports RFI correspondent Serge Daniel.
'Too close' to Issoufou
Tchiani remains a close ally of Issoufou. He was linked to a 2015 coup attempt against the ex-president, but denied that in court.
According to Serge Daniel, Tchiani was not chosen unanimously to lead the National Council for the Safeguarding of the Country (CNSP) as the new military government is calling itself.
“Some in the army some think he is too close to ex-president Mahamadou Issoufou,” said a witness to the first 48 hours of discussion following Bazoum's removal on Wednesday.
In a statement on state television on Friday, 28 July, Tchiani called on "the technical and financial partners and friends of Niger to understand the specific situation of our country and provide all necessary support to help it overcome the challenges it faces".
Reiterating that soldiers had seized power because of worsening security as the country battles a jihadist insurgency in the Sahel region, Tchiani said: "We cannot continue with the same approaches proposed so far, as it risks witnessing the gradual and inevitable disappearance of our nation."
Critics of Tchiani underline that if the country's security situation has indeed worsened, it has happened under his watch.
