At the summit of Niger’s power structure, one question has become impossible to sidestep: when a security programme is worth 1.8 billion FCFA a month, who gets to decide how it is financed — and what happens to the people who try to block it? The answer runs straight through the Commandement des Forces de Protection et de Développement (CFPD), an arrangement that has turned General Salifou Mody, CNSP leader Abdourahamane Tiani and former finance minister and prime minister Lamine Zeine into open rivals.
On paper, the CFPD exists to guard Niger’s strategic infrastructure. Behind closed doors, the fight is about three things: the soldiers assigned to it, the missions it is handed, and the money that keeps it running.
What the CFPD was meant to protect
General Abdourahamane Tiani signed decree no. 2024-309/P/CNSP/MDN on 9 May 2024, formally establishing the Commandement des Forces de Protection et de Développement.
The new structure was tasked with shielding the country’s most valuable sites: mining and oil installations, transport corridors and pipelines. The defence ministry confirmed the creation of a body dedicated to securing strategic sites and the routes linking them. The same year, 10,000 young recruits were brought into the ranks of the Nigerien armed forces, swelling the manpower available to the programme. The initiative answered a security need — and rode the broader expansion of the military apparatus.
The arithmetic that turned a decree into a battleground
Article 28 of the decree is the clause everyone is fighting over. It sets a Prime Unique d’Astreinte (PUA), a special duty allowance, of at least 12,000 FCFA per man per day, and obliges the companies whose operations are being protected to contribute financially.
For a force of 5,000 men, the math is straightforward:
- Per day: 5,000 men × 12,000 FCFA = 60 million FCFA
- Per month (30 days): 1.8 billion FCFA
- Per year: 21.9 billion FCFA
Those figures are not projections. They are the financial reality of the arrangement, visible in the contracts signed with companies, the sums already transferred and the troops actually deployed. This is precisely where the rivalry inside the regime concentrates.
Defence ministry against finance ministry
It was General Salifou Mody who pushed the CFPD into existence, and General Tiani who signed the decree while under direct pressure from his own defence minister.
Once the signature was in place, the CNSP leader instructed finance minister Lamine Zeine to freeze the financial provisions attached to the CFPD. The result: a structure brought to life but stripped of the means to operate. For Mody, it amounted to a direct political blockage imposed on his flagship project.
Mody and Zeine: the dispute that broke the government
Lamine Zeine sits at the centre of the friction. His ministry deliberately prevented the military programme from being translated into a budget line.
By January 2026, Zeine was wearing two hats — prime minister and minister of the economy and finance — while Salifou Mody served as minister of state for defence. Mody succeeded in removing the finance portfolio from Zeine, then forced him out of the premiership altogether. The quarrel over the CFPD had destroyed trust among the men running the state.
The reshuffle that handed Mody the government
Zeine’s exit was the mechanism through which power was reorganised. General Mody took charge of the government and imposed his own condition: holding both the premiership and the defence ministry. Political, military and administrative authority were thus concentrated in a single pair of hands.
Damolleydi: the second front
Faced with the CFPD blockage, the regime launched a general mobilisation programme called Damolleydi, intended to bring volunteers and existing structures into play.
Mody was placed at the head of the committee steering that mobilisation, pushing aside interior minister General Mohamed Toumba. Yet having secured the strategic initiative, he deliberately slowed its rollout. The programme lost its public profile, gradually replaced by autonomous local structures.
Three levers of control
The whole affair has tightened the state apparatus around three axes:
- Command — who controls the personnel posted to strategic sites.
- Missions — who designates which infrastructures are to be secured and sets the priorities.
- Money — who oversees the contributing companies and manages the financial flows they generate.
Article 28 of the decree governs this financial mechanism, worth 1.8 billion FCFA every month.
The stake hiding behind the personalities
That monthly figure is the direct financial prize of the arrangement, and it confirms how political the CFPD has become — a crossroads where strategic resources, corporate contributors and the chain of command meet.
Beyond the personal rivalry between Tiani, Mody and Zeine, the winner of this confrontation holds exclusive command over Niger’s men, missions and resources. Underneath the clash of personalities, what is being locked down is total mastery of the state apparatus.
