The 41-year-old lieutenant-colonel took power on January 24 in Ouagadougou after two days of mutinies in several barracks in the country.
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Lieutenant-Colonel Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba was sworn in as President on Wednesday February 16 by the Constitutional Council, three weeks after the coup that brought him to power and just before the redefinition of the international military presence in the Sahel. .
“I swear before the people of Burkina Faso (…) to preserve, respect, enforce and defend the Constitution, the fundamental act and the laws” of Burkina, said Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba during a ceremony broadcast by national television.
He was dressed in a military fatigues surrounded by a scarf in the colors of Burkina, his head wearing a red beret. The ceremony was held in a small room in the Constitutional Council where only the official press was admitted.
Lieutenant-Colonel Damiba, 41, took power on January 24 in Ouagadougou after two days of mutinies in several barracks in the country, overthrowing elected President Roch Marc Christian Kaboré, accused in particular of not having succeeded in countering jihadist violence. which has been hitting Burkina for nearly seven years.
He set up a junta called the Patriotic Movement for Safeguarding and Restoration (MPSR) which has “security” as its priority.
In the wake of Mali and Niger, Burkina Faso has been caught since 2015 in a spiral of violence attributed to jihadist movements, affiliated with Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State group, which have killed more than 2,000 people in the country and forced at least 1.5 million people to flee their homes.