Benin’s real coup already happened under President Talon |
Africa’s expanding coup belt gained a new front line on December 7, when soldiers appeared on Benin’s state television claiming power. Led by Lieutenant Colonel Pascal Tigri and calling themselves the “Military Committee for Refoundation”, eight uniformed men declared President Patrice Talon “removed from office”, suspended the constitution, dissolved state institutions, and ordered border closures.
Observers prepared for a now-familiar scenario: A forced resignation, leaders detained or under house arrest, and routine condemnations from the African Union (AU) and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).
However, by midday, those expectations were upended.
Within hours of the broadcast, Interior Minister Alassane Seidou announced that the coup attempt had been thwarted.
Talon reappeared publicly, on TV, and authorities reported the arrest of at least 14 plotters, including 12 soldiers.
The announcement and subsequent drama sent shockwaves across the region, yet it was not a sudden rupture, but the visible peak of a deeper political crisis years in the making.
The attempted coup was merely the final symptom.
In its aftermath, order was restored, but not legitimacy.
Benin’s real coup – the systematic overthrow of its democracy – had already occurred under Talon.
All the attempted takeover did was to lay bare a political system that had already been undermined from within.
Before Talon came to power in April 2016, Benin was widely recognised for its peaceful transfers of power, a dispensation anchored in the February 1990 National Conference, which ended one-party rule and laid the foundations for a multi-party democratic system.
Talon, a multi-millionaire cotton magnate, positioned himself as a reformer in his first electoral campaign, promising political, administrative, and economic change for the better.
Once elected, his course shifted.
Instead of strengthening democracy, Talon began to systematically dismantle the democratic institutions that had made Benin, a country of nearly 15 million people, known as an early democratic success in Africa.
Since 2016, Benin’s democratic institutions have been hollowed out through legal engineering, judicial capture, and electoral rules rewritten to