Benin Finance Minister Romuald Wadagni is expected to make the leap from behind-the-scenes technocrat to \u200bhead of state on Sunday when he runs as the strong favourite in a presidential election clouded by terrorist attacks in the north.<\/p>\n
The 49-year-old former \u200cDeloitte executive has spent the past decade implementing the economic agenda of outgoing president Patrice Talon, who is barred by constitutional term limits from running again.<\/p>\n
His campaign points to achievements like tripling the national budget and posting cotton-exporting Benin’s highest GDP growth rates in more than two decades.<\/p>\n
Talon\u2019s tenure has featured a consolidation of power within the presidency and the almost total sidelining of the political opposition, easing Wadagni\u2019s path to \u200bpower.<\/p>\n
Since his selection as ruling party candidate last September, Wadagni has played down the idea of any major break from the man with whom he shares, as \u200bhe told French magazine “Jeune Afrique” last month, \u201calmost like a father-and-son relationship\u201d.<\/p>\n
He has proposed creating new development hubs across the country – to better distribute \u2060industrial and tourism investments – and expanding access to health care, while touting the benefits of continuity from one government to the next.<\/p>\n
Under Talon \u201cI had the honor of managing one \u200bof your most precious assets: your money,\u201d Wadagni told supporters in March.<\/p>\n
If elected president, \u201cI will do the job with the same seriousness and dedication.\u201d<\/p>\n
GOVERNMENT SURVIVED DECEMBER COUP ATTEMPT<\/strong><\/p>\n The election almost didn\u2019t \u200bhappen.<\/p>\n In the pre-dawn hours of December 7, disgruntled soldiers\u00a0attempted a coup, temporarily seizing the state television network and getting close enough to Talon that he witnessed clashes firsthand.<\/p>\n Nigeria\u00a0carried out airstrikes,\u00a0and the West African regional bloc ECOWAS deployed elements of its standby force to keep Talon in office. About 100 alleged coup participants are in jail awaiting trial.<\/p>\n The coup plotters said they were motivated in part by the government\u2019s \u201cneglect\u201d of \u200bsoldiers on the frontline in the north.<\/p>\n Benin has been the hardest hit among coastal West African states by terrorist groups that have made major gains in the central Sahel.<\/p>\n Fighters linked \u200bto al Qaeda and Islamic State have been rapidly increasing their\u00a0attacks on the borderlands\u00a0between Niger, Benin and Nigeria, turning remote transit corridors into active conflict zones.<\/p>\n Al Qaeda-linked Jama’at Nusrat al\u2011Islam wal\u2011Muslimin\u00a0killed 54 \u200cBenin soldiers\u00a0in \u2060one attack a year ago, and another 15 in an attack\u00a0last month.<\/p>\n \u201cBenin, historically, has never faced a situation like this, with serious threats, with these regular losses in the army,\u201d said Gilles Yabi, founder of the West African think tank WATHI.<\/p>\n Wadagni has staged several campaign rallies upcountry – including in Parakou and Tanguieta – to try to demonstrate that the government controls all its territory.<\/p>\n He has also vowed to create municipal\u00a0police forces\u00a0in northern border towns to defend against attacks.<\/p>\n HARVARD-TRAINED CANDIDATE EMPHASISES LOCAL ROOTS<\/strong><\/p>\n Wadagni was born on June 20, 1976, in Lokossa, in southern \u200bBenin, and studied management, financing and auditing at \u200bGrenoble School of Management in France before \u2060joining Deloitte, where he became a partner. He has also attended courses at Harvard in the U.S.<\/p>\n His campaign, seeking to fend off doubts about his ties to Benin after many years abroad, has emphasised his \u201cdeep roots\u201d in the country and his \u201cordinary Beninese childhood\u201d.<\/p>\n Under Talon, the \u200bpolitical opposition has been steadily weakened, making Wadagni\u2019s victory all but guaranteed.<\/p>\n He is facing off against just one candidate: Paul Hounkpe of \u200bthe Cowry Forces for \u2060an Emerging Benin party, who maintains that most citizens are not benefiting from Talon’s high GDP growth and flashy tourism projects.<\/p>\n The main opposition party, The Democrats, failed to get enough lawmakers to sponsor a candidate, so it is not on the presidential ballot. It also\u00a0failed to win any seats\u00a0in legislative elections in January.<\/p>\n Talon’s supporters say a stronger presidency can be more effective in developing \u2060the country, \u200bwhile his critics decry the shrinking political space.<\/p>\n If security woes persist, the opposition could become even more constrained, \u200bsaid Nina Wilen, director of the Africa Programme at the Egmont Royal Institute for International Relations in Belgium.<\/p>\n “There is a risk that the government will be increasingly cracking down on any opposition to make sure they maintain that \u200bgrip on power,” she said.<\/p>\n “Where there is a jihadist expansion, the rulers want to have complete control.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Benin Finance Minister Romuald Wadagni is expected to make the leap from behind-the-scenes technocrat to \u200bhead of state on Sunday when he runs as the strong favourite in a presidential election clouded by terrorist attacks in the north.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":20220,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":13,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_comment_section":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","source_name":"Reuters","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,2362,27],"tags":[512,389,4380],"class_list":["post-20447","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economy","category-featured","category-west-africa","tag-benin","tag-patrice-talon","tag-romuald-wadagni"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20447","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20447"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20447\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20450,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20447\/revisions\/20450"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}