By Faith Nyasuguta
Days after seizing power, Guinea’s military junta has frozen all state bank accounts in a bid to secure government assets.
This was revealed on a Thursday TV statement with the junta confirming that the directive affected both the institutional and individual accounts of the outgoing state officials.
“This includes public administrative and commercial establishments in all ministries and the presidency, presidential programmes and projects, members of the outgoing government as well as senior officials and administrators of state financial institutions,” a junta mouthpiece said.
That means that senior state officials of the overthrown president, Alpha Condé’s government will not access their accounts.
At the same time, leaders from the 15-member Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) via a virtual summit have demanded a return to the constitutional order and Conde’s immediate release.
They have also given a nod to sending a high-level mission to Guinea as soon as possible, according to Burkina Faso’s Foreign Minister Alpha Barry.
“At the end of that mission, ECOWAS should be able to re-examine its position,” Barry revealed.
He, however, did not announce any immediate economic sanctions against Guinea, just like ECOWAS previously imposed against Mali after a coup in August last year.
ECOWAS was silent last year as Conde and Ivory Coast President Alassane Ouattara sought third terms after altering constitutions that would have pushed them into stepping down, strategies that were denounced as illegal by their opponents.
The coup leaders seized power on Sunday and said they wanted to end rampant corruption, human rights abuses, and mismanagement.
On Monday, the colonel behind Guinea’s military coup vowed to establish a unity government to inspect a transition period while indicating that there would be no “witch hunt” against the overthrown government.
“A consultation will be launched to set down the broad parameters of the transition, and then a government of national union will be established to steer the transition,” Lieutenant-colonel Mamady Doumbouya said in a Monday speech.
He, however, missed revealing what amount of time the handover and consultation would take.
In an outward gesture to Conde’s civilian opponents, some 80 people thrown behind bars by president Conde over politics- they mostly fought against the constitutional change- were on Tuesday evening released
Further, Doumbouya met up with Guinea’s heads of military branches as he sought to unify the nation’s armed forces under the junta’s instruction.
On taking over, Doumbouya informed ex-ministers they were not allowed to leave the nation and that they had to hand over their official vehicles to the military.
Col Doumbouya also called on mining firms to continue their operations in the nation, ascertaining that they would be exempt from the imposed nationwide curfew.
