Niamey:  Nigerien NGOs recommended on Saturday the military junta to "renegotiate" mining contracts signed with foreign companies, considered doubtful since 2008 under the regime of ousted President Mamadou Tandja.

In a statement issued Saturday in Niamey, Ali Idrissa, president of ROTAB, a coalition of NGOs working for transparency in extractive industries, said that "there was opacity around the issuance of mining and oil licenses in Niger since 2008 and we recommend the establishment of an investigation commission and the renegotiation of the contracts".

According to ROTAB, a member of the "Publish What You Pay" campaign, this investigation should seek to place the responsibility "for cases of alleged corruption on sales of mining license by the regime of President Tandja".

Since the adoption by the Nigerien government of a new mining policy which advocates for the diversification of mineral resources and partners, some 122 licenses were issued to French, Chinese, Canadian, Australian, American and South African companies, sources said. The diversification of partners decided in mid-2007 by the authorities in Niamey in the exploitation of mineral resources had the direct effect of breaking the monopoly of the French group AREVA, which had been tapping uranium in the northern part of Niger for 40 years.

In 2009, MPs of the presidential majority had rejected a draft statement proposed by their colleagues in the opposition to the creation of a parliamentary investigating commission on mining contracts awarded in recent years by Niger.  A few weeks later, Nigerien newspapers had published articles involving Hadia Toulaye Tandja, and Ibrahim Hamidou, a journalist close to the Tandja family, having received a "bribe" of 5 million dollars from Niger Uranium Venture SA, owned by Australians, after they obtained a uranium license in northern Niger.

Niamey has been engaged since 2005 in the global process for the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), proposed in 2002 by former British Prime Minister Tony Blair at the World Summit on Sustainable Development.