Nadia Akacha, Tunisia’s chief of staff and closest adviser to the country’s president Kais Saïed, announced her resignation on social media on Monday, January 24 2022. 

“I decided to resign after two years … I am faced with fundamental differences in opinion regarding [Tunisia’s] best interests and I think it is my duty to withdraw,” she wrote on her Facebook page, without elaborating. 

A political source told Reuters that Akacha had disagreed with Saïed's support for an Interior Ministry decision to force six senior security officials, including a former intelligence chief, to retire. 

Akacha is believed to have played an important role in the President’s decision to suspend parliament and take full executive power in July 2021, a move which opponents have described as “a coup against the constitution”.

In May 2021, Middle East Eye had revealed that Akacha's office had a copy of a plan for Saïed to take these very steps and declare a "constitutional dictatorship", which the authors of the document said would be a tool for "concentrating all powers in the hand of the president of the republic."

Akacha's decision comes amid unprecedented mobilisation against Kais Saied's power grab as Tunisians are becoming increasingly critical of his policies.