Seyni Kountché
Seyni Kountché was the ruler of Niger from April 1974, when he deposed Diori in the famine, to November 1987, when he died of a brain tumour in a Paris hospital. He was the lieutenant-colonel who governed thirteen years through a Supreme Military Council and never held an election. His years were the uranium boom and the second drought. He was a Zarma from Fandou, a sergeant in the French army in Indochina and Algeria. He had come home to the new state's army in 1961 and was its chief of staff at forty-two. The coup of 15 April 1974 was made in the name of the famine, the ministers' warehouses full of grain, and the corruption that everyone could see. The first thing he did was open the warehouses, and the second was to ask the French garrison to leave, which it did in 1975, and then to ask it back. The uranium at Arlit and Akouta paid for the state from 1975 to 1981, the price quadrupling with the oil shock. The country had for a few years money for the roads, the Kandadji dam that was never built, the schools, the food reserve and the army, and the development society he announced in 1983 as the country's own path between the parties and the barracks. Then the price collapsed with the Three Mile Island market and the debt was what was left. The rule was austere. He lived in the barracks, wore the uniform, arrested the ministers who stole, and had the Sawaba leader Bakary and the Diori ministers held for years without trial. The coup attempts of 1975 and 1976 and the Tuareg and Hausa dissidents' raid on Niamey in October 1983 were put down and the men shot. The country was quiet in the way that Sahelian military states were in the 1980s, with Libya's Gaddafi across the desert as the enemy that justified the garrison and the French. The drought of 1984 and 1985 was the second of his life. This time the grain was given out, which the country noticed. He died in Paris on 10 November 1987, at fifty-six. His cousin and chief of staff Ali Saibou took the council and, within four years, had to give the country the national conference and the parties. He was born in Fandou Maayaki. The stadium in Niamey is named for him. That is the honour the country gives. The junta of 2023 cites him as the soldier who sent the French away. That is half of what he did.
- Lived: 1931 CE – 1987 CE
- Nationality: Nigerien
- Roles: head of state, general, politician
