Can Niamey keep shielding a man Cotonou wants in its courts while asking Benin to believe that the reconciliation between the two neighbours is genuine? That is the question now hovering over General Abdourahamane Tiani’s government, and it has little to do with whether Kemi Seba is guilty or innocent. The activist’s fate has become a test of political coherence at the very moment Niger and Benin are trying to move past years of estrangement.
Kemi Seba, a Benin national, was arrested in South Africa in April 2026. Cotonou is seeking his extradition in connection with the attempted coup of 7 December 2025, accusing him of having thrown his weight behind the plotters through public statements and videos circulated while events were unfolding. Arrest warrants were issued against him; he rejects the charges.
His defence strategy now points north, towards Niger.
That is no accident. Kemi Seba holds a Nigerien diplomatic passport and serves as a special adviser to General Tiani, positions he secured in 2024. It was with that same diplomatic passport that he is believed to have entered South Africa at the end of 2025. Niamey therefore sits at the heart of his legal protection against Benin’s extradition request, and the arrangement has become politically awkward.
The question Niamey has not answered
How does a government explain that it is ready to extend institutional protection to a foreign national wanted by a neighbouring state’s judiciary, while at the same time stripping its own citizens of their nationality? The comparison is difficult to sidestep, and it is precisely what makes the Kemi Seba file more than a judicial matter.
Five decrees, one diplomatic passport
On 17 September 2026, Abdourahamane Tiani signed a decree provisionally revoking the Nigerien nationality of five people. Among them was the former prime minister Ouhoumoudou Mahamadou, alongside four other Nigeriens that included former associates of Mohamed Bazoum and a social media activist.
Who the state stripped of citizenship
The official grounds include collusion with foreign powers, undermining state security, circulating information liable to disturb public order, and activities capable of unsettling public peace and safety.
These are provisional measures, issued under an ordinance adopted in 2024. Official counts now put the number of people provisionally stripped of their nationality at 25 since the mechanism was introduced. Niamey presents each decision as an act of defence of the country’s fundamental interests and national security. Yet the growing frequency of such decrees has fuelled a broader controversy over the political use of citizenship. Human Rights Watch has said the framework raises serious human rights and due process concerns.
What Kemi Seba holds instead
Against that backdrop, the activist’s situation stands out sharply. On one side, Nigeriens lose their nationality in the name of protecting the state and its core interests. On the other, a Benin national known for years of radical hostility towards Western influence enjoys an official function at the side of the Nigerien head of state, complete with a diplomatic passport. The contrast is hard to miss.
Why Cotonou wants the activist
Kemi Seba is no outside observer of the region’s political turbulence. A pan-Africanist campaigner long identified with attacks on France and Western influence in Africa, he has drawn closer to the Sahel’s military regimes in recent years, a trajectory sealed by his appointment as Tiani’s special adviser.
His posture towards Benin is openly confrontational. After the failed takeover of 7 December 2025, Benin’s authorities targeted him with arrest warrants, arguing that his statements and certain videos published as events unfolded amounted to support for those attempting to overthrow the government. Extradition proceedings from South Africa followed. Politically, the difficulty for Niamey remains intact: Kemi Seba is now tied directly to a case that touches Benin’s political stability, and the fact that he holds an official status under Niger’s president is bound to be watched closely in Cotonou.
A reconciliation that took years to reach
The affair lands at a particularly delicate moment in relations between the two neighbours. After years of tension triggered by the July 2023 coup in Niger, Niamey and Cotonou had recently begun talking again. On 2 June 2026, Benin’s president Romuald Wadagni travelled to Niamey to meet Abdourahamane Tiani, a visit presented by the Beninese presidency as a sign of warming ties and a shared desire to relaunch bilateral cooperation.
Why the timing matters
That rapprochement carries strategic weight. The two countries are neighbours with intertwined economic interests, communities living on both sides of the border and shared security challenges. Their cooperation matters for trade and for the movement of people and goods. Any erosion of confidence between Niamey and Cotonou therefore has consequences well beyond the diplomatic arena.
While both capitals try to turn the page on years of confrontation, keeping a privileged relationship with a man sought by Benin’s courts risks feeding new misunderstandings.
Sovereignty used as both shield and sword
The issue for Niamey is not guilt or innocence; that belongs to the courts. The issue is the political signal being sent. Tiani places national sovereignty, the defence of Niger’s fundamental interests and the fight against external threats at the centre of his programme. Under that logic, Nigeriens accused of endangering state security can face a measure as severe as the provisional loss of their nationality.
At the same time, Niamey maintains an institutional closeness with Kemi Seba, a foreign national whose country of origin is now demanding his handover. The discrepancy inevitably raises a question of consistency: can sovereignty be invoked to punish Nigerien citizens harshly while also serving as a shield for a foreigner wanted by a neighbour’s justice system? That is the question likely to shadow the relationship between the two capitals.
What restoring trust would actually take
Normalisation between Niger and Benin cannot rest on summit meetings and statements of intent alone. It will require gestures capable of rebuilding confidence. In the Kemi Seba file, Niamey is in an exposed position: by granting the activist a diplomatic passport and an official role, Tiani’s government created an institutional bond far deeper than a simple tie with a foreign campaigner. That choice is now back in the spotlight exactly as Benin presses for his return.
Niger is entitled to defend its sovereign decisions. Benin may pursue whatever legal steps it considers necessary, and South Africa remains free to rule as it sees fit at the end of the extradition process. But politically, one reality holds: the protection extended to Kemi Seba complicates the thaw between Niamey and Cotonou.
The paradox runs deeper still because that protection coincides with a hardening of the Nigerien regime’s stance towards its own nationals. Between the provisional loss of citizenship for Nigeriens accused of harming state interests and the diplomatic passport issued to a Benin national wanted by Cotonou, Tiani’s government will eventually have to answer a question of political coherence.
If Niamey genuinely intends to build lasting relations with Cotonou, it will need to show that the rapprochement goes beyond official ceremonies. Reconciliation is also built on trust, and in the Kemi Seba affair that trust remains visibly fragile.
