Jonathan briefs Tinubu, says Guinea-Bissau coup ‘stage-managed’

Former President Goodluck Jonathan on Saturday met with President Bola Tinubu at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, where he briefed the President on the situation in Guinea-Bissau.

Recall that the former President was in the West African country as the head of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) election monitoring team when military officers seized power in a coup.

Jonathan, while recounting his experience, said the coup that ousted President Umaro Embaló appeared “stage-managed,” noting that “the President himself was the one announcing the coup.”

Jonathan and his team were, however, evacuated from the country following interventions by President Bola Tinubu.

Speaking with journalists on Saturday, Jonathan said Côte d’Ivoire sent an aircraft to airlift him from Guinea-Bissau just before the aircraft from Nigeria took off.

Recall that the former Nigerian leader had been trapped after the coup d’état, once again highlighting what appears to be the increasingly lackadaisical posture of the Nigerian government.

Read also: Jonathan returns to Nigeria after evacuation from coup-hit Guinea-Bissau

While Abidjan acted with urgency to protect a visiting African leader, Abuja appeared flat-footed, offering little visible coordination or assertive diplomatic engagement despite Jonathan’s status as a former president and an ECOWAS envoy.

Jonathan said the Ivorian government had already made arrangements to fly him out using the country’s presidential jet, just as aides of President Bola Tinubu made similar arrangements.

Umaro Embaló, President of Guinea-Bissau since February 2020 and a former prime minister between November 2016 and January 2018, was overthrown in the ninth coup since the country gained independence from Portugal in 1974. The last successful coup occurred in 2012.

Embaló had survived two recent coup attempts, in 2022 and 2023, which also targeted him, and there were allegations of another coup plot at the end of October 2025.

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