The juntas have cultivated a weird image. It's a bit confusing but kind of like Ziggerism. Like the FLN during the Algerian Civil War, they're tapping into an image of old-left anti-imperialism. They fly in guests from old-school socialist regimes such as Cuba and Venezuela for these stage-managed events. But at home, they have systematically killed, imprisoned, or exiled their own local progressive activists while promoting a conservative, traditionalist-religous agenda (all have criminalized homosexuality). In Niger, anything involving sex education has been outlawed. There are Western leftists who will shill for these people because they see Thomas Sankara, who they've heard was supposed to be good, but the social agenda is very right-wing in a dashiki-clothed black nationalist we-wuz-kangz type thing. They're basically Boko Haraming themselves while fighting ISIS. It's like this:
https://youtu.be/OXre9C4kOsM