2023-11-13 20:30:00
The news has the effect of a bomb: the former rebel leader and former Ivorian Prime Minister Guillaume Soro is determined to return from his almost five-year exile from the continent. This is what he announced on Sunday, November 12, in a short video posted on a life sentence.
The response came a few hours later on the morning of Monday, November 13, where Guillaume Soro announced that he had been in Niamey since Saturday. The former protégé of President Ouattara, aged 51, met in Niamey, the capital of Niger, General Abdourahamane Tchiani who came to power through a coup d’état in July. “I had the honor of being received today in audience by the President of the Transition of Niger, Head of State, General Abdourahamane Tchiani, accompanied by General Salifou Mody, Minister of Defense, and General Mohamed Toumba, Minister of the Interior,” declared Guillaume Soro on his X account. “The interview, which lasted an hour and a half, was exceptional in terms of the quality and depth of the exchanges,” he continued.
The story of five years of exile
In his statement on Sunday evening, Guillaume Soro, in a suit, tie and graying beard, claimed to be putting an end to his “exile” which had taken him in recent years to France, Belgium and Dubai in particular, indicating that he was ” painful to live far away” from his “ancestral and native land of Africa”. He also claimed that there was an “attempt to arrest” him at Istanbul airport on November 3 in order to extradite him to Ivory Coast, but said he was “very well”.
He also detailed having traveled successively to France, Belgium, Dubai and “to the confines of the Asian continent” in recent years, accusing Ivorian President Alassane Ouattara of having “undertaken to trigger a fierce international hunt for ‘man’, against him. “I will not go any further in my exile, I refuse to be a fugitive. I am not guilty of any crime,” he continued, affirming that he wanted to “contribute to the reconciliation of the sons and daughters” of Côte d’Ivoire.
A surprise return to Niamey
For his return to the African continent, he therefore chose Niger, a country which has maintained tense relations with Côte d’Ivoire since the coup d’état of July 26 which brought General Tchiani to power and overthrew Mohamed Bazoum.
In the weeks following the putsch, Ivorian President Alassane Ouattara was among the most determined West African voices in favor of economic sanctions and military intervention to restore ousted President Mohamed Bazoum to office. President Ouattara, who attended a Saudi Arabia-Africa summit in Riyadh, met there on Friday with the Nigerien Prime Minister appointed by the military, Ali Mahamane Lamine Zeine.
Contacted by AFP, Ivorian government spokesperson Amadou Coulibaly did not wish to comment on the meeting between MM. Soro and Tchiani.
“There is a sort of new geopolitical configuration in the sub-region with three juntas (Burkina, Mali, Niger) which see Abidjan as an adversary. Guillaume Soro is geographically closer to Ivory Coast and will be able to maneuver in these countries in relative security,” estimates Ivorian political analyst Arthur Banga.
Leader of the rebellion which controlled the northern half of the country in the 2000s, Guillaume Soro had militarily helped Alassane Ouattara to come to power during the post-electoral crisis of 2010-2011 against outgoing President Laurent Gbagbo, who refused to admit his defeat. He then became the first head of government of President Ouattara, then president of the National Assembly in 2012, before a break in early 2019 due, according to several observers, to the presidential ambitions of Guillaume Soro. He was sentenced in 2020 in his absence to 20 years in prison for “concealment of embezzlement of public funds” in Ivory Coast, then to life imprisonment a year later for “endangering state security”, accused of having fomented a “civil and military insurrection” aimed at overthrowing the Ouattara regime in 2019. His appeal was deemed inadmissible. Guillaume Soro already broke his silence last May, affirming that no reason prevented him from being a candidate in the next presidential election, scheduled for 2025 in Ivory Coast. His political movement, Generations and Solidarity Peoples (GPS) was dissolved in Ivory Coast in June 2021.
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