When armed troopers within the small West African nation of Benin appeared on nationwide tv on December 7 to announce they’d seized energy in a coup, it felt to many throughout the area like one other episode of the continuing coup disaster that has seen a number of governments toppled since 2020.
But the scenes performed out otherwise this time.
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Amid experiences of gunfire and civilians scampering to security within the financial capital, Cotonou, Beninese and others throughout the area waited with bated breath as conflicting intelligence emerged. The small group of putschists, on the one hand, declared victory, however Benin’s forces and authorities officers mentioned the plot had failed.
By night, the state of affairs was clear – Benin’s authorities was nonetheless standing. President Patrice Talon and loyalist forces within the military had managed to carry management, thanks to assist from the nation’s larger neighbours, notably its japanese ally and regional energy, Nigeria.
While Talon now enjoys victory because the president who couldn’t be unseated, the highlight can also be on the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). The regional bloc rallied to save lots of the day in Benin after their seeming resignation within the face of the crises rocking the area, together with simply final month, when the navy took energy in Guinea-Bissau.
This time, although, after a lot criticism and embarrassment, ECOWAS was able to push again towards the narrative of it being an ineffective bloc by baring its tooth and biting, political analyst Ryan Cummings advised Al Jazeera.
“It wished to remind the area that it does have the facility to intervene when the context permits,” Cummings mentioned. “At some level, there wanted to be a line drawn within the sand [and] what was at stake was West Africa’s most steady sovereign nation falling.”
Is a brand new ECOWAS on the horizon?
Benin’s navy victory was an astonishing turnaround for an ECOWAS that has been solid as a useless weight within the area since 2020, when a coup in Mali spurred an astonishing sequence of navy takeovers throughout the area in fast succession.
Between 2020 and 2025, 9 coup makes an attempt toppled 5 democratic governments and two navy ones. The newest profitable coup, in Guinea-Bissau, occurred on November 28. Bissau-Guineans had voted within the presidential election some days earlier than and had been ready for the outcomes to be introduced when the navy seized the nationwide tv station, detained incumbent President Umaro Sissoco Embalo, and introduced a brand new navy chief.
ECOWAS, whose high-level delegation was in Bissau to observe the electoral course of when the coup occurred, appeared on the again foot, unable to do way more than concern condemnatory statements. Those statements sounded much like these it issued after the coups in Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, and Guinea. The bloc appeared a far cry from the establishment that, between 1990 and 2003, efficiently intervened to cease the civil wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone, and later within the Ivory Coast. The final ECOWAS navy intervention, in 2017, halted Gambian dictator Yahya Jammeh’s try to overturn the election outcomes.
Indeed, ECOWAS’s success in its heyday hinged on the well being of its members. Nigeria, arguably ECOWAS’s spine, whose troops led the interventions in Liberia and Sierra Leone, has been mired in insecurity and financial crises of its personal currently. In July 2023, when Nigeria’s President Bola Ahmed Tinubu was the ECOWAS chair, he threatened to invade Niger after the coup there.
It was disastrous timing. Faced with livelihood-eroding inflation and relentless assaults by armed teams at dwelling, Nigerians had been a number of the loudest voices resisting an invasion. Many believed Tinubu, sworn in simply months earlier, had misplaced his priorities. By the time ECOWAS had completed debating what to do weeks later, the navy authorities in Niger had consolidated help all through the armed forces and Nigeriens themselves had determined they wished to again the navy. ECOWAS and Tinubu backed off, defeated.
Niger left the alliance altogether in January this yr, forming the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) with fellow navy governments in Mali and Burkina Faso. All three share cultural and geographic affinities, however are additionally linked by their collective dislike for France, the previous colonial energy, which they blame for interfering of their nations. Even as they battle rampaging armed teams like Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), the three governments have minimize ties with French forces previously stationed there and welcomed Russian fighters whose effectiveness, safety specialists say, fluctuates.
But Benin was completely different, and ECOWAS appeared wakeful. Aside from the truth that it was one coup too far, Cummings mentioned, the nation’s proximity to Nigeria, and two grave errors the putschists made, gave ECOWAS a preventing probability.
The first mistake was that the rebels had did not take Talon hostage, as is the modus operandi with putschists within the area. That allowed the president to straight ship an SOS to his counterparts following the primary failed assaults on the presidential palace at daybreak.
The second mistake was maybe even graver.
“Not all of the armed forces had been on board,” Cummings mentioned, noting that the small group of about 100 insurgent troopers had doubtless assumed different items would fall in line however had underestimated how loyal different factions had been to the president. That was a miscalculation in a rustic the place navy rule resulted in 1990 and the place 73 p.c of Beninese imagine that democracy is healthier than another type of authorities, in keeping with ballot website Afrobarometer. Many take explicit delight of their nation being hailed because the area’s most steady democracy.
“There was division inside the military, and that was the window of alternative that allowed ECOWAS to deploy as a result of there wasn’t going to be a case of ‘If we deploy, we will likely be focused by the military’. I dare say that if there have been no countercoup, there was no approach ECOWAS would have gotten concerned as a result of it might have been a traditional battle,” Cummings added.
Quickly studying the room, Benin’s neighbours reacted swiftly. For the primary time in practically a decade, the bloc deployed its standby floor forces from Nigeria, Ghana, the Ivory Coast, and Sierra Leone. Abuja authorised air assaults on insurgent troopers who had been successfully cornered in a navy base in Cotonou and on the nationwide TV constructing, however who had been placing up a last-ditch try at resistance. France additionally supported the mission by offering intelligence. By dusk, the rebels had been fully dislodged by Nigerian jets. The battle for Cotonou was over.
At least 14 individuals have since been arrested. Several casualties had been reported on either side, with one civilian, the spouse of a high-ranking officer marked for assassination, among the many useless. On Wednesday, Beninese authorities revealed that the coup chief, Colonel Pascal Tigri, was hiding in neighbouring Togo.
At stake for ECOWAS was the chance of shedding one more member, presumably to the landlocked AES, mentioned Kabiru Adamu, founding father of Abuja-based Beacon Security intelligence agency. “I’m 90 p.c positive Benin would have joined the AES as a result of they desperately want a littoral state,” he mentioned, referring to Benin’s Cotonou port, which might have expanded AES export capabilities.
Nigeria might additionally not afford a navy authorities mismanaging the deteriorating safety state of affairs in northern Benin, as has been witnessed within the AES nations, Cummings mentioned. Armed group JNIM launched its first assault on Nigerian soil in October, including to Abuja’s pressures because it continues to face Boko Haram within the northeast and armed bandit teams within the northwest. Abuja has additionally come below diplomatic fireplace from the US, which falsely alleges a “Christian genocide” within the nation.
“We know that this insecurity is the keep on with which Tinubu is being crushed, and we already know his nostril is bloodied,” Cummings mentioned.
Revelling within the glory of the Benin mission final Sunday, Tinubu praised Nigeria’s forces in an announcement, saying the “Nigerian armed forces stood gallantly as a defender and protector of constitutional order”. A bunch of Nigerian governors additionally hailed the president’s motion, and mentioned it bolstered Nigeria’s regional energy standing and would deter additional coup plotters.
Not but out of the woods
If there’s a notion that ECOWAS has reawakened and future putschists will likely be discouraged, the fact might not be so constructive, analysts say. The bloc nonetheless has a lot to do earlier than it may be taken critically once more, notably in upholding democracy and calling out sham elections earlier than governments develop into weak to mass uprisings or coups, Beacon Security’s Adamu mentioned.
In Benin, for instance, ECOWAS didn’t react as President Talon, in energy since 2016, grew more and more autocratic, barring opposition teams in two earlier presidential elections. His authorities has once more barred the principle opposition challenger, Renaud Agbodjo, from elections scheduled for subsequent April, whereas Talon’s choose, former finance minister Romuald Wadagni, is the apparent favorite.
“It’s clear that the elections have been engineered already,” Adamu mentioned. “In your entire subregion, it’s troublesome to level to any single nation the place the rule of legislation has not been jettisoned and the place the voice of the individuals is heard with out worry.”
ECOWAS, Adamu added, must proactively re-educate member states on democratic rules, maintain them accountable when there are lapses, as within the Benin case, after which intervene when threats emerge.
The bloc seems to be taking heed. On December 9, two days after the failed Benin coup, ECOWAS declared a state of emergency.
“Events of the previous few weeks have proven the crucial of great introspection on the way forward for our democracy and the pressing must put money into the safety of our group,” Omar Touray, ECOWAS Commission president, mentioned at a gathering within the Abuja headquarters. Touray cited conditions that represent coup dangers, such because the erosion of electoral integrity and mounting geopolitical tensions, because the bloc splits alongside overseas influences. Currently, ECOWAS member states have stayed near Western allies like France, whereas the AES is firmly pro-Russia.
Another problem the bloc faces is managing potential fallout with the AES states amid France’s growing closeness with Abuja. As Paris faces hostility in Francophone West Africa, it has drawn nearer to Nigeria, the place it doesn’t have the identical unfavorable colonial fame, and which it perceives as helpful for safeguarding French enterprise pursuits within the area, Cummings mentioned. At the identical time, ECOWAS remains to be hoping to woo the three rogue ex-members again into its fold, and nations like Ghana have already established bilateral ties with the navy governments.
“The problem with that’s that the AES would see the intervention [in Benin] as an act not from ECOWAS itself however one thing engineered by France,” Adamu mentioned. Seeing France instigating an intervention which might have benefitted AES reinforces their earlier complaints that Paris pokes its nostril into the area’s affairs, and will push them additional away, he mentioned.
“So now we now have a state of affairs the place they really feel like France did it, and the unhappy factor is that we haven’t seen ECOWAS dispel that notion, so the ECOWAS standby power has [re]began on a contentious step,” Adamu added.
