One of the most recent attempts in a series of coups that have swept across West Africa in recent years was the seizure of power in Benin—a country until recently regarded as a bastion of democracy on the continent.
They declared Lieutenant Colonel Pascal Tigri, commander of a special forces unit within the National Guard, as the new head of state, replacing Patrice Talon. The soldiers provided the following justification for their actions: the security situation in the country’s north, where terrorist organisations have been increasingly active, has sharply deteriorated; the authorities have neglected the families of soldiers killed fighting terrorists, together with numerous cases of unjustified promotions within the military taking place.
In the same televised address, an MCR representative stated that the army solemnly pledges to give the people of Benin hope for ushering in a new era of development, where brotherhood, justice, and hard work will reign supreme.
However, the course of events later that day showed these vows were not destined to be fulfilled. The majority of the army refrained from joining the coup, whose leaders had recruited mainly new conscripts to carry it out. An attempt by the rebels to seize the presidential residence was repelled. According to a colonel of the Beninese army who led its defense, cited by The Defense Post, the rebel’s attack embraced around 100 servicemen taking part in it.
By midday on December 7, the coup, with the death toll of 12, had been suppressed with the support of Nigeria and France, as reported by Africa Daily. As far as the leader of the failed coup, Lieutenant Colonel Pascal Tigri, is concerned, representatives of the Beninese government, when asked about him by a Reuters correspondent on December 10, responded that he and a number of his accomplices had gone into hiding in Lomé 2, a district of the Togolese capital.
During the subsequent investigation, opposition party leader Candide Azannaï of the “Restoring Hope” party was arrested on December 12, 2025, on charges of plotting a coup and inciting rebellion. Azannaï had served as deputy defense minister in Patrice Talon’s government from 2016 to 2017.
Chabi Yayi, head of external relations for the opposition Democratic Party and son of former President Thomas Boni Yayi, was also arrested for involvement in organizing the coup attempt.
All in all, by mid-December, security forces had detained over 30 people, mostly military personnel, who will face trial on charges of treason, murder, and threatening state security.
Analysts believe the reasons behind this segment of the military turning against the existing regime reside in ineffective governance and widespread corruption during Patrice Talon’s rule.
The Degrowth of Benin’s Model of a “Democratic” State
Prior to Talon having taken office, Benin had already been a country to have ended the one-party rule system back in 1990 and to have set the ball rolling in terms of developing multi-party politics.
During his first election campaign in 2016, Patrice Talon, a multimillionaire and the “cotton magnate of Cotonou” (Benin is one of Africa’s largest producers of cotton), positioned himself as a reformer, promising to launch administrative and economic reforms.
Nevertheless, instead of strengthening the existing multi-party system, he basically dismantled the institutions that had earned Benin, a country with a population of 15 million people, its status as one of the few “democratic states” in Africa.
According to Qatar’s Al Jazeera, it came as a consequence of the situation when the ruling coalition back in 2017 started shaping the composition of the Constitutional Court by itself, which then granted the authorities the right to reject opposition candidate lists in parliamentary elections.
As a result of these “reforms,” only two pro-government parties appeared on the ballot in the April 2019 elections: the “Progressive Union for Renewal” and the “Republican Bloc.” All other opposition parties, including those linked to former parliamentary speaker Bruno Amoussou, once an ally of Talon, were barred from participating.
As soon as the election results were made public, hundreds of protesters erected barricades and burned tires in Benin’s economic capital, Cotonou, calling on President Patrice Talon to resign. Security forces used firearms and water cannons to disperse the demonstrations. Dozens were arrested. Even former President Thomas Boni Yayi was placed under house arrest on charges of instigating protests.
In this context, Amnesty International, when characterizing the situation around the elections, which was ultimately acute, emphasised that the wave of arbitrary arrests of political activists and journalists, along with the suppression of peaceful protests, has reached alarming proportions.
The presidential elections in April 2021 were also marred by severe electoral violations. By leveraging the judiciary branch under his control to prosecute political rivals and by intimidating voters, Patrice Talon secured 86 percent of the vote.
As it was pinpointed by Al Jazeera, 50 opposition figures were put behind bars in Benin in 2022 on various charges ranging from terrorism to economic sabotage. Thirty of them were released that same year in the wake of a visit by French President Emmanuel Macron.
It is therefore unsurprising that the military’s actions in December 2025 were preceded by another coup attempt, this time involving two associates of President Patrice Talon.
As reported by AP News, Olivier Boko, a businessman and a long-time friend of Talon, and Oswald Homksi, a former sports minister, were sentenced in January 2025 to 20 years in prison for allegedly conspiring to stage a coup by bribing the head of the presidential guard. However, Homksi was caught red-handed while attempting to deliver several bags of money to the latter.
Overall, Benin’s situation is further complicated by the fact that, according to the IMF, the country remains one of the poorest states in Africa, with the GDP per capita amounting to around $1,500 per year.
While Benin’s GDP has shown notable growth in recent years, 6.7 percent in 2024 compared to 6.4 percent the previous year, these apparent successes of the ruling regime, as highlighted by the Luxembourg Times, are overshadowed and levelled off by the arrests of political opponents and the growth of Islamist insurgency in the country’s north.
Taking these factors into account, the Qatari Al Jazeera argues that the latest coup attempt by a group of soldiers represents the culmination and logical outcome of a deep political crisis that had been brewing for years, rooted in the system of governance established by Talon.
Nevertheless, after the coup was suppressed, Patrice Talon addressed the National Assembly and, without allusions or direct references to specific parties, claimed the rebels had received foreign support.
Nigeria’s Impactive Center for Accountability, Democracy, and Rights described the attempted coup as a serious obstacle to democratic governance and regional stability, also accusing unnamed external forces of sponsoring an unconstitutional change of government in Benin for the sake of their vested interests and calling for decisive measures against such interference.
In this regard, the French newspaper Revue Geopolitique notes that while gunfire was still in effect in Cotonou on December 7, 2025, Beninese opposition figure Kemi Seba, an advisor to the head of neighbouring Niger, General Tiani, declared on social media that the Patrice Talon regime had fallen, allegedly due to a nationwide uprising against the “pro-French dictator.”
The publication claims that Niger, which recently broke away from French influence, has its own interest in a regime change in Benin—one of the last footholds of French influence in Francophone West Africa. Relations between Niamey (as a member of the Sahel Alliance comprising Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger itself) and Cotonou have been tense.
Niger’s interest in having a more friendly partner in Benin stems from the fact that a Chinese CNPC oil pipeline runs through Beninese territory, allowing Niger to export oil via a Beninese port on the Gulf of Guinea coast. China has already invested $4.6 billion in this oil extraction project. However, the Beninese-Nigerien relations, which are currently strained, threaten the economic viability of this project, on which Niamey’s leadership pins its hopes for national economic revival through export revenues. In addition, geopolitical factors such as Washington and Paris’s resistance to growing Chinese influence in the region must be considered.
Victor Goncharov, African affairs expert, PhD in Economics
Follow new articles on our Telegram channel
