Bissau, November 26th, 2025. Gunfire echoes through the capital’s streets. Borders slam shut. The military steps before cameras, invoking “national order” and “the fight against narco-barons.” In yet another replay of a familiar regional script, Guinea-Bissau’s armed forces declare a coup d’État, the fifth since independence, toppling President Umaro Sissoco Embaló just hours before official election results were due.
This sudden shift, though clad in uniforms and patriotic slogans, leaves more questions than answers.
From ballots to bayonets: how Embaló was swept aside
The coup, carried out just three days after joint presidential and legislative elections, was led by Brigadier General Dinis N’Canha — once trusted head of Embaló’s own presidential guard. In a televised announcement, flanked by grim-faced officers, he proclaimed the military had assumed “total control” of state institutions to preempt an alleged conspiracy to destabilize the country.
President Embaló was reportedly arrested, though conflicting reports suggest he may have been escorted to Senegal under discreet diplomatic cover. His silence since then has only deepened the mystery.
The junta quickly appointed Colonel Horta N’Ta Na Man as “transitional leader” — a move as hasty as it was predictable, and which the international press swallowed with the usual bland terminology: “swift transition,” “interim authority,” “fragile calm.”
The narco-justification: the old playbook dusted off again
The Guinea-Bissau coup d’État 2025 was justified by the military on the grounds of an alleged plot involving “drug lords and corrupt politicians.” To any analyst even mildly familiar with the region, this sounds painfully familiar.
Yes, Guinea-Bissau is a known cocaine transit hub between Latin America and Europe. Yes, there are decades of evidence linking certain factions of the military and political elite to trafficking networks. But this raises a paradox: if the narco-state is a chronic illness, how can the infected claim to cure it?
The junta failed to provide names, proof or timelines. The accusation, vague and sweeping, serves one purpose only: to paint themselves as reluctant saviours, stepping in “at the last moment.” It’s a rhetorical smokescreen, one the international community has seen before, and yet, rarely challenges in real time.
Embaló’s legacy: rigged reforms and institutional decay
To be clear, Embaló was no democratic paragon. Since winning office in 2019, his presidency has been marked by centralization of power, judicial manipulation, and the deliberate postponement of elections. In 2023, he dissolved the opposition-dominated Parliament under dubious pretenses, a move many saw as the beginning of his autocratic consolidation.
His main rival, Domingos Simões Pereira, was barred from participating in the 2025 race after a suspect ruling by the Supreme Court, a court whose independence had long been neutered. For the first time in its post-independence history, the PAIGC, the historical liberation party, was absent from the ballot.
Was the coup an actual insurrection against dictatorship, or a staged play, crafted with military complicity to freeze an inconvenient electoral result? Both theories circulate in Bissau’s streets. Neither can be dismissed.
A regional contagion: West Africa’s democratic retreat
Guinea-Bissau’s coup d’État in 2025 is not an isolated rupture but part of a regional pattern. Since 2020, Mali, Guinea, Burkina Faso, and Niger have all succumbed to military takeovers. Some were welcomed, others not, but all revealed the same structural rot: institutions too weak to absorb conflict without collapsing.
The African Union and ECOWAS, increasingly impotent, have become masters of statements but not deterrence. Their condemnations ring hollow. Worse, some regimes born from coups are now backed by parts of the population, disillusioned by decades of foreign-managed democracy.
This puts Guinea-Bissau on a knife’s edge. Will the junta seek legitimacy through token reforms and a cosmetic “transition,” as others have done? Or will it harden into a military oligarchy?
Behind the uniform, the state bleeds
The 2025 coup in Guinea-Bissau is not a moment of salvation. It is the latest symptom of a chronically sick state, one where politics has become indistinguishable from criminal enterprise, and where every election is either stolen or suspended.
The military’s invocation of “order” is less a promise than a placeholder. Beneath the surface, the same old networks, of drug money, foreign influence, and institutional sabotage, remain untouched. The uniforms have changed; the interests, never.
What we are witnessing is not a revolution but a rotation of elites. One that risks dragging Guinea-Bissau even deeper into its historical pattern: coups, confusion, and control without consent.
