by Nurat Uthman
The BBC said on Friday it would continue to report on the Sahel region after the military junta in Niger suspended BBC radio for three months.
It is the latest in a slew of Western media to be sanctioned by military juntas in the region of western and north-central Africa.
BBC radio was to be suspended “with immediate effect,” the Niger leadership said, accusing the British broadcaster on Thursday of spreading “erroneous information likely to destabilise social peace and undermine the morale of the troops”.
Popular BBC programmes including in the majority Hausa language are broadcast in Niger via local radio partners, reaching some 2.4 million people in 2024, according to the BBC.
“This directly impacts our ability to reach audiences with much-needed accurate and impartial news,” a BBC spokesperson said of the ban.
“We stand by our journalism and we will continue to report on the region without fear or favour.”
Since seizing power in a July 2023 coup, the military government has banned several Western media outlets, including Radio France Internationale (RFI) and France 24.
Niger also announced on Thursday it was “filing a complaint” against RFI.
On Wednesday, both the BBC and RFI reported that jihadists had killed 90 soldiers and over 40 civilians in Chatoumane, in the western Tera region bordering Burkina Faso teeming with armed fighters.
Niger’s junta dismissed reports of the attack and deaths as “baseless assertions” and a “campaign of intoxication”.
Although AFP was unable to verify those numbers from an independent local source, a Western security source told AFP that 90 to 100 people died in Tuesday’s attack.
