The Beninese blockade on Nigerien oil is now lifted. The Chinese company West African Oil Pipeline Company (Wapco), manager of the pipeline, can now export Nigerien crude through Benin without difficulty.
The Beninese government has lifted the issue of exporting Nigerien oil via the Niger-Benin pipeline. All authorizations have been granted to the Chinese company Wapco for loading oil at the Sèmè-Podji terminal station. The blockade placed on oil on May 6 and temporarily and punctually lifted a few days later is now definitively lifted. A step forward in this issue which has for several weeks polluted the already extremely tense relations between Niger and Benin since the coup d’état perpetrated by General Abdourahamane Tiani. This decision certainly stems from the Benin-China-Niger tripartite meeting held in Niamey on May 28 and 29, 2024 to address the bottlenecks that prevent the normal development of cooperation for the export of oil.
Tension still high in Niamey and Cotonou
The lifting of the oil blockade does not mean a reduction in tension between the two countries, with Niger sticking to its position. Officially, Niamey accuses its neighbor of harboring terrorists on its territory who are training to destabilize Niger. In a media outing carried out last Saturday, the Nigerien Prime Minister, Ali Lamine Zeine, pushed the envelope very far, accusing Benin of being at the origin of the terrorist attack perpetrated against the military base of Boni (in the region of Tillabéry, near the border with Mali). On the Beninese side, the accusations made by Niger are refuted purely and simply. We know that the Nigerien junta is angry with the Beninese president, Patrice Talon, for having been one of the strongest supporters of the restoration of constitutional order at all costs in Niamey after the putsch of July 26, 2023.
The Nigerien junta in a revanchist attitude
By refusing to open its borders with Benin, Niger, the main client of the autonomous port of Cotonou, is seeking to burden Beninese finances, thus deprived of an important Source of income. But deep down, the military in power in Niamey seem to forget that Benin resisted without blinking more than a year of border closures by Nigeria, a country on which it nevertheless seemed dependent on several levels. In August 2019, in fact, Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari unilaterally decided to close his country’s land borders and only begin to reopen them from December 2020. This highlighted the exaggeration of a popular idea then very popular in Benin, namely that “when Nigeria coughs, Benin has a cold”.
