This story is a deep dive into the complex world of information warfare unfolding in West Africa, specifically targeting northern Nigeria. It’s about how a military regime in Niger, backed by Russia, is trying to manipulate public opinion by exploiting existing grievances and cultural ties, all through the guise of journalism.
The Bait: A Journalism Summit in Niamey
Imagine Bashir Muhammad, a journalist running a Hausa-language digital news platform in northern Nigeria. His work connects with a local audience often overlooked by bigger, English-speaking media outlets. This makes him valuable, and also a target. In 2024, a prominent Nigerien broadcaster named Mariam Laouali – known as Sarkin Abzin – approached him. She’s a known supporter of the military junta that took power in Niamey the year before, led by General Abdurrahman Tchiani. This junta had overthrown the democratically elected President Muhammad Bazoum, stirring up a lot of international trouble, especially with ECOWAS (Economic Community of West African States) and Nigeria’s President Bola Tinubu, which even led to threats of invasion and a regional split with the formation of the Alliance of the Sahel States (AES).
Sarkin Abzin’s pitch to Bashir was slick: a pan-African summit for Hausa-language journalists in Niamey, a first of its kind, promoting cross-border media cooperation and building something together. It sounded professional, but Bashir had his doubts. His questions weren’t answered to his satisfaction, and when he declined, Sarkin Abzin pushed back, growing increasingly frustrated. “She didn’t take it well,” Bashir later told HumAngle. “The way she reacted told you this wasn’t just about journalism.” He was right. This “summit” was just a lure, a way to gain access to northern Nigeria’s 40 million Hausa speakers and tap into their existing frustrations and distrust of Nigerian leaders.
Fishing for Discontent: The Real Agenda
At the time, many Nigerians were struggling with severe economic pressures and a deep-seated anger towards their leaders, especially President Tinubu. Protests, even those where people waved Russian flags and called for a coup, were a symptom of this widespread discontent. It was a fertile ground for recruitment, where people’s grievances were already simmering, just waiting to be exploited. Pro-junta actors and AES-aligned influence networks were actively using platforms like TikTok to undermine confidence in Nigeria’s democratic leadership, particularly targeting President Tinubu and ECOWAS. They spread accusations that Nigerian politicians were secretly working with insurgents and foreign powers to destabilize the AES states.
Sarkin Abzin’s tour of northern Nigerian newsrooms and radio stations in 2024, in hindsight, was the tip of a much larger iceberg. She visited Kano and other northwestern areas, offering the same invitation to editors and station managers: come to Niamey, meet your peers, and build solidarity. While many, like Bashir, quietly refused, seeing through the thinly veiled agenda against the backdrop of strained diplomatic relations between Nigeria and Niger, others were not so lucky or discerning. Musa Abba, a journalist from a private radio station in Kebbi State, was nominated by his managers to attend. For him, it was a chance to connect with fellow Hausa journalists beyond Nigeria’s borders, with accommodation and food covered. He even traveled with other attendees, including politicians and government officials. But what he discovered in Niamey completely contradicted the premise of the invitation. He realized it was a “sophisticated plan to form Hausa journalists who will be promoting the Nigerien junta and anti-West sentiment across Hausa-speaking countries.”
A Summit Without Genuine Journalism: The Propaganda Machine
Sarkin Abzin herself made no secret of her allegiance. Her TikTok page openly promoted the Sahel juntas, urging her followers to champion General Tchiani. In a social media exchange, she dismissed calls for democracy, stating that what mattered was building their country and confronting “hypocrites and oppressors within the West,” as well as “hypocrites among us here,” including Nigerians who supported the old democratic system instead of Tchiani’s soldiers. This “summit,” organized by a personal organization she founded, Kungiyar Yan Jarida Na Afrika Masu Magana Da Harshen Hausa (Association of Hausa-speaking Journalists in Africa), had all the trappings of a legitimate conference – state backing, institutional cover, and a well-hosted program. Yet, its core was devoid of genuine journalism.
The irony was stark: while the junta in Niger was actively repressing and arresting its own journalists, using detention to control unwanted information, they were inviting journalists from other countries to a supposed “journalism summit.” When the event opened on August 24, 2024, the keynote speakers weren’t press freedom advocates or media experts, but politicians. Prime Minister Ali Lamine Zeine, representing Tchiani, delivered a speech in Hausa about Niger’s exit from ECOWAS as a statement of sovereignty. This was a direct attack on ECOWAS, particularly Nigeria and Benin, accusing them of conspiring with France to destabilize Niger – allegations that independent fact-checkers found no credible evidence for, but which successfully galvanized domestic support by shifting blame to external threats. The Niamey summit was designed to feed this narrative to Nigerian voices who could then carry it back home. Prominent Nigerian figures like retired General Hamza Almustafa and politician Najaatu Muhammad used the platform to denounce the West and further incite anti-Nigerian government sentiments, claiming a conspiracy to divide Niger from Nigeria and suggesting Abuja served Paris and Washington over its own people. As Musa Abba concluded, “It was not really a journalists’ meeting… By the time the politicians started speaking, those of us who understood what was happening knew we had made a mistake.” The journalists had gone to cover something, but ended up becoming part of a propaganda machine.
The Hausa Messages: Spreading Disinformation
The Niamey summit wasn’t an isolated event; it was part of a larger, ongoing campaign. On Christmas Day of 2024, General Tchiani delivered a televised address in Hausa, a deliberate choice to reach millions across West Africa, especially in northern Nigeria where pro-Russian and anti-West sentiments were already brewing. He made inflammatory, yet seemingly verified, claims: that France had paid Nigerian authorities to establish a military base in Borno to destabilize Niger, that France supplied Boko Haram with anti-aircraft weapons, and that France and ISWAP had an agreement to establish a training camp near Sokoto, all with the knowledge of Nigerian leaders. He even named Nigerian security officials, adding an air of legitimacy to his fabrications. The “hook” in these allegations wasn’t entirely invented; the Nigerian Defence Headquarters had only weeks earlier classified Lakurawa, a group Tchiani mentioned, as a terrorist organization. This pre-existing fear was then exploited, with Tchiani conveniently attaching a culprit.
In regions like Sokoto and Zamfara, where communities had endured years of terrorist violence, these allegations didn’t sound outlandish. “People said, ‘We always knew France was behind this,'” a civil society worker in Kano, Muhammad Hamza, explained. “Tchiani just confirmed what they already believed.” Even when BBC Hausa published testimonies refuting Tchiani’s claims, the reaction was dismissive. A survey in Kano State revealed that 50% of respondents believed Tchiani’s claims, 30% were undecided, and only 20% rejected them. Many cited President Tinubu’s perceived closeness to France as a reason for their suspicion. Nigeria’s National Security Advisor, Nuhu Ribadu, attempted to refute the claims, but it was largely ineffective. “This is the new reality of information warfare. It is no longer just about truth versus falsehood. It is about who controls the language in which truth is told. It is about who defines the enemy—and, ultimately, who is believed,” noted security analyst Balarabe Ismail. Tchiani revisited these themes in a three-hour televised address in June 2025, again accusing Nigeria, France, and the US of sponsoring terrorism.
The Headquarters of Disinformation: Russian Playbook
Analysts had already identified a surge in disinformation networks linked to Russia in Niger after the 2023 coup. Al Jazeera reported that Niger had become a hotspot for false rumors, misleading videos, and manipulated audio clips, following a playbook similar to Mali and Burkina Faso, where Wagner-linked networks had established an information environment that facilitated military takeovers. After Wagner Group founder Yevgeny Prigozhin’s death, these operations were absorbed into two new structures: the Russian Africa Corps for military presence and the Africa Initiative news agency, linked to Russian intelligence and operating from Moscow. The Africa Initiative, with its press credentials and regional language capabilities, offered an “upgrade” and institutional legitimacy that Wagner never had, effectively masquerading influence as media development.
The leaders of the Alliance of Sahel States – Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso – have united around a shared political project, even launching a joint television channel to promote a unified narrative across their territories and beyond. This regional media infrastructure explicitly targets the Hausa-speaking communities in northern Nigeria, leveraging shared language, faith, and existing frustrations to ensure their narratives resonate. Sarkin Abzin’s journalist recruitment scheme perfectly fits into this larger framework. The objective isn’t necessarily to convert Nigerian journalists into paid agents, but rather to cultivate a group of northern Nigerian media voices who subtly align with the junta’s perspective. As a security analyst working on influence operations in West Africa put it, “What Niger and Russia are doing is not complicated… They are creating the conditions under which Nigerian citizens begin to see their own government as the enemy.” While the operation hasn’t achieved its full objective – Bashir Muhammad’s refusal being a notable point of resistance – and the WhatsApp group formed after the Niamey summit has largely faltered, this narrative paints a chilling picture of modern information warfare, where truth is a casualty and perception is power.