Guinea-Bissau, not Benin, the real test of the efficacy of ECOWAS’s response to coups
Guinea-Bissau, not Benin, the real test of the efficacy of ECOWAS’s response to coupsDate | 31 December 2025
Solomon Ayele Dersso, PhD
Founding Director, Amani Africa
As in the previous years, West Africa remains on the lead when it comes to being ground zero for the new era of coups in Africa. During the closing months of 2025, the region experienced a coup orchestrated by an incumbent election losing president in Guinea-Bissau and another attempted coup in Benin.
It was in the early hours of 7 December that a group of soldiers initiated a coup in Cotonou. After seizing the national broadcaster, they announced the dissolution of state institutions, the suspension of the constitution and the creation of the Comité Militaire pour la Refondation, led by Lt-Col Pascal Tigri. Despite this announcement, the putschists did not succeed in either seizing Benin’s president or gaining the full support of the army. Acting on the request of Benin’s President Patrice Talon, a series of regional actions, under the auspices of the Economic Community of West Africa (ECOWAS), culminated in forestalling the consummation of the coup. Nigeria played a lead role, with Nigeria’s President Bola Tinubu dispatching the country’s air force to strike positions held by coup makers. Within the framework of the ECOWAS Standby Force, Nigeria, Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana and Sierra Leone also sent ground troops.
By the end of the day, these swift coercive measures, undertaken in close coordination with and logistical support from French forces, succeeded in foiling the coup attempt. The ECOWAS was hailed (here and here) for the role it played in foiling the attempted coup in Benin. Given the trends in recent years, the regional body’s response to the attempted coup against President Talon is rightly commended, potentially seen as marking a dawn for turning the tide against coups in the region.
Yet, given the timing of the coup in Guinea-Bissau and the attempted coup in Benin, the real test of whether the response of ECOWAS marks a turning point against coups came from Guinea-Bissau rather than Benin. What made the intervention in ECOWAS successful was a unique combination of factors, including the lack of full support from Benin’s army for the putschists, the economic and security interests of Nigeria that were at stake, as well as French logistical and intelligence support.
In Guinea-Bissau, despite the fact that the initial response of ECOWAS echoed its most successful and firm response to the post-electoral crisis in The Gambia in 2017, it was unable to follow through. Ten days before the coup attempt in Benin, after convening the national elections belatedly on 23 November and in a context meant to guarantee his re-election as President, Guinea-Bissau’s incumbent president, Umaro Sissoco Embalo, announced his own overthrow from power through a military coup. As the head of the ECOWAS election observation mission, former Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan told reporters that what happened in Guinea-Bissau was a ‘ceremonial coup’, suggesting that it was orchestrated by Embalo himself to prevent his electoral loss. Following Embalo’s announcement, on 26 November, a group of army officers announced their seizure of power and suspension of all political institutions. Declaring the establishment of the High Military Command for the Restoration of National Security and Public Order (HMC) as the governing body, it imposed an overnight curfew and halted the electoral process. Highlighting the close coordination of the coup between Embalo and the army, Embalo was allowed to fly out of Guinea-Bissau despite a declaration by the military of the closure of international borders and Embalo’s earlier announcement of being put under house arrest.
The Chairperson of ECOWAS, President Julius Maada Bio of Sierra Leone, convened an extraordinary summit on 27 November. The communiqué that the summit adopted condemned the ‘coup d’etat perpetrated on 26 November.’ Most importantly (and echoing ECOWAS’s earlier actions in Cote d’Ivoire (2010/11) and The Gambia (2016/17), the ECOWAS summit rejected ‘any arrangements that perpetuate an illegal abortion of the democratic process and the subversion of the will of the people of Guinea-Bissau.’ While deciding to suspend Guinea Bissau, ECOWAS demanded that the coup makers ‘respect the will of the people and allow the National Electoral Commission to proceed without delay with the declaration of the results of the elections of 23 November 2025.’ Cognisant of the imperative for swift and high-level engagement, it also mandated ‘the Chair of the (ECOWAS) Authority to lead a high-level Mediation Mission to Guinea Bissau to engage the leaders of the coup’.
Similarly, in an emergency session held on 28 November, the African Union (AU) Peace and Security Council (PSC) decided to suspend Guinea-Bissau. Similar to ECOWAS, the PSC, beyond expressing its strong condemnation and total rejection of the coup, demanded that the military leaders ‘allow the National Electoral Commission to finalise the tabulation and proclamation of the results of the elections as well as accompany the electoral process to the end with the inauguration and assumption of the winner.’
Acting on the decision of the ECOWAS summit, President Bio of Sierra Leone led a delegation to Guinea-Bissau to push for ‘complete restoration of constitutional order.’ As part of the effort to safeguard the electoral process, Nigeria announced that it granted asylum and protection at its Embassy to Fernando Dias da Costa, the presumed winner of the 23 November presidential elections.
The ECOWAS and, by extension, the AU did not follow through on their earlier decisions. Despite the firm and appropriate initial response from both ECOWAS and the PSC, neither was able to follow through on their initial demand nor on the warning from ECOWAS that it reserved the right to use all options ‘including sanctions on all entities deemed culpable of disrupting the electoral and democratic process.’ Thus, when the ECOWAS Authority of Heads of State and Government met in mid-December, ECOWAS changed its approach from seeking the conclusion of the electoral process and safeguarding the will of the people of Guinea-Bissau to a short transition that will culminate in another election. Thus, despite reiterating its earlier decision and noting that the elections held on 23 November were free and fair, ECOWAS called for ‘institution of a short transition to be led by an inclusive government that reflects the political spectrum and society in Guinea Bissau, with a mandate to undertake constitutional, legal, and political reforms and the organization of credible, transparent and inclusive elections.’
What stands out in this decision is not simply that ECOWAS opted for abandoning its earlier demand for ‘respect for the will of the people’ of Guinea-Bissau, but also the regional body’s total silence about the complicity of the former president of Guinea-Bissau in the coup. This also signifies the persistent charge against ECOWAS and the AU that they tend to turn a blind eye to unconstitutional acts of incumbents.
Indeed, ECOWAS, drawing on its experience in securing the outcome of the December 2010 elections in Cote d’Ivoire, including through the use of sanctions, could have resorted to the option of adopting steps towards imposing sanctions, including by leveraging the West African Monetary Union (as it did in Cote d’Ivoire), as part of increasing the cost on the coup makers. Additionally, both ECOWAS and the AU could have initiated a process towards giving recognition of the outcome of the election results, as they did both in respect to Cote d’Ivoire and The Gambia in 2011 and 2017, respectively. Such steps would have slammed shut any route for the military leaders in Guinea-Bissau to entrench their illegal usurpation of power. Indeed, as a show of their seriousness about their zero tolerance for coups, ECOWAS and the AU, as El-Ghassim Wane proposed, could also have launched an investigation into the circumstances leading to the interruption of the electoral process and the attempt to frustrate the will of the people of Guinea-Bissau. The lack of such measures means that Embalo could continue to exploit the situation and the military junta could continue to defy ECOWAS in pursuit of its plans.
Despite the success in foiling the coup, the ECOWAS response in Benin is emblematic of the deeply flawed policy approach that has become characteristic of both the AU and regional bodies like ECOWAS: react to the symptom (coup) while remaining silent to the democratic regressions that underly the coup. Even more poignantly, the coup in Guinea-Bissau reveals that the turn of events in Cotonou does not in any way signify a new dawn in the approach of ECOWAS for turning the tide against coups in the region.