ACTIVISTS warned on Thursday against military intervention in Niger as a deadline for restoring the ousted president drew nearer.

The warning came as Niger’s ruling military group says it is severing military agreements with France, its former colonial ruler, and fired some of the previous government’s key ambassadors.

The Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas) has set Sunday as a deadline to release and reinstate President Mohamed Bazoum or face the possible use of force.

The fast approaching deadline has seen a flurry of diplomatic activity.  

But, despite the arrival of Ecowas envoys in the capital Niamey on Thursday, a deal does not look on the cards.

The ruling military group said it was terminating the military agreements and protocols signed with France and announced the end of functions for Niger’s ambassadors to France, the United States, Togo and neighbouring Nigeria, which is taking a leading role in Ecowas’s approach.

France has 1,500 troops in Niger, which had been envisioned as the base for counter-terror operations in the region after setbacks in the region such as its forced withdrawal from Mali.

The US has some 1,100 soldiers in Niger, including at a strategic drone base.

This is the first time that Ecowas has threatened to use force to intervene in a coup in a region that has seen five of them in the past three years, with two each in Mali and Burkina Faso.

But there is widespread opposition to the threatened military intervention.

The West African Peoples’ Organisation (Wapo) said it “vehemently opposed” the ultimatum by Ecowas and described it as “a manoeuvre by colonial France and Great Britain, under the hegemony of American imperialism, to resort to armed intervention under the guise of restoring democracy and human rights in Niger.” 

Warning that the real purpose is to “keep Niger continually in the imperialist fold,” Wapo described President Bazoum as “servile to the imperialist powers of Nato, particularly France, which for decades has plundered its uranium.” 

Kwesi Pratt, the general secretary of the Socialist Movement of Ghana, slammed “Ecowas’s adventurism.” 

There is also resistance to the use of force in Niger from within near neighbours Benin, whose president, Patrice Talon, was dispatched by Ecowas to assess the situation on the ground in Niger.

The Communist Party of Benin warned President Talon against participating in any aggression against “the fraternal people of Niger.”

They added: “The African peoples and those of our sub-region are engaged in a fight to the death against the imperialist powers, and in particular against FrancAfrique” (a term denoting French domination of its former African colonies).