France helped Benin in thwarting weekend coup attempt – Official

FILE: French President, Emmanuel Macron.

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France helped the authorities in Benin thwart a coup attempt at the weekend, an aide to President Emmanuel Macron said on Tuesday, revealing a French role in a regional effort that foiled the latest bid to stage a putsch in West Africa.

Macron led a “coordination effort” by speaking with key regional leaders, the aide, asking not to be named, told reporters two days after Sunday’s failed coup bid.

France — at the request of the Beninese authorities — provided assistance “in terms of surveillance, observation and logistical support” to the Benin armed forces, the aide added.

Further details on the nature of the assistance were not immediately available.

A group of soldiers on Sunday took over Benin’s national television station and announced that President Patrice Talon had been deposed.

But loyalist army forces ultimately defeated the attempted putsch with the help of neighbouring Nigeria, which carried out military strikes on Cotonou and deployed troops.

West Africa has endured a sequence of coups in recent years that have severely eroded French influence and presence in what were French colonies until independence.

Mali saw coups in 2020 and 2021, followed by Burkina Faso in 2022 and then Niger in 2023. French forces that had been deployed in these countries for an anti-jihadist operation were consequently forced to withdraw.

A successful putsch in Benin, also a former French colony, would have been seen as a new blow to the standing of Paris and Macron in the region.

Guinea-Bissau, a former Portuguese colony, was meanwhile rocked by a coup in November after elections, which led to military authorities taking over.

‘Caused serious concern’

On Sunday, Macron spoke with Talon as well as the leaders of top regional power Nigeria and Sierra Leone, which holds the presidency of West African regional bloc ECOWAS, the Elysee aide said.

The situation in Benin “caused serious concern for the president (Macron), who unequivocally condemned this attempt at destabilisation, which fortunately failed,” said the aide.

ECOWAS has said troops from Ghana, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone were being deployed to Benin to help the government “preserve constitutional order.”

“Our community is in a state of emergency,” Omar Alieu Touray, president of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), said on Tuesday, highlighting the jihadist threat in the region as well as coups.

The bloc had threatened intervention during Niger’s 2023 coup that deposed president Mohamed Bazoum — an ally of Macron — but ultimately did not act.

France also did not carry out any intervention against the Niger coup.

“France has offered its full political support to ECOWAS, which made a very significant effort this weekend,” said the aide.

At least a dozen plotters had been arrested, and all hostages, including high-ranking officers, had been released by Monday, according to loyalist military sources.

Talon made his own television appearance late Sunday, assuring the country that the situation was “completely under control.”

Talon, 67, is due to hand over the reins of power in April after the maximum-allowed two terms leading Benin, which in recent years has been hit by jihadist violence in the north.

On Tuesday, former Beninese president Thomas Boni Yayi, whose opposition Democrats party has been excluded from next year’s presidential elections, condemned the failed coup.

“I condemn most vigorously and strongly condemn this bloody and shameful attack on our country,” said Boni Yayi, a former chairman of the African Union who served as Benin’s president from 2006 to 2016.

The transfer of state power “responds to a single cardinal and unconditional principle: that of the ballot box, that of the people, that of free and transparent elections”, Boni Yayi added in a video posted on Facebook.

AFP

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