Mohamed Bazoum

Mohamed Bazoum (Muḥammad Bāzūm; born 1 January 1960) is a Nigerien politician who served as the 10th president of Niger from 2021 to 2023. He assumed office in April 2021 after winning the 2020–21 presidential election and a failed coup d'état attempt. He was ousted in the 2023 Nigerien coup d'état by members of the presidential guard and the armed forces led by Abdourahamane Tchiani. Before becoming president, he served as the president of the Nigerien Party for Democracy and Socialism (PNDS-Tarayya). He also served in as a minister of Foreign Affairs from 1995 to 1996 and again from 2011 to 2016. He was minister of State at the Presidency briefly in 2016 and was later appointed minister of State for the Interior between 2016 until his election as president in 2021, when he resigned to focus on running for the 2020–21 presidential election. Bazoum won the second round of the presidential election with 55.67% of the vote against former president Mahamane Ousmane. Bazoum, a member of the Arab minority Ouled Slimane people, is the first Arab president of Niger in the country's history. Mohamed Bazoum was born in 1960 in the village of Bilabrin, French Niger, in the present-day Diffa Region of Niger. He was raised in the town of Tesker, 200 kilometers west of Bilabrin, in Zinder Region. Bazoum is a member of the Ouled Slimane people, an Arab tribe originally from the Fezzan region of Libya who constitute a small minority within both Niger and the larger Nigerien Arab population. Bazoum attended primary school in Goure and graduated from Amadou-Kouran-Daga High School (lycée Amadou-Kouran-Daga) in Zinder. He studied philosophy in the faculty of letters and human sciences' philosophy department at Cheikh Anta Diop University (sometimes called the University of Dakar) in Senegal from 1979 to 1984. Bazoum then completed his master's degree in political and moral philosophy, also at the University of Dakar, including a diploma in logic and epistemology. Following the completion of his degrees, Bazoum taught at several provincial high schools for six years.