A Sudden Faultline in Benin’s Democratic Illusion
For years, Benin had been marketed, mostly by Western analysts and international observers, as a rare African democracy immune to the military upheavals that plague its regional neighbours. It boasted regular elections, a functioning multi-party system, and a civilian president preparing to hand over power in 2026. But this Sunday, December 7, 2025, that image cracked violently. An attempted coup, swift, surprising, and televised, rattled the country’s political elite and exposed fissures long ignored beneath a façade of constitutional order.
What unfolded in the early hours was more than a brief mutiny. It was a message. One that says: even Benin is not untouchable.
Televised Uprising: What Happened?
Just before dawn, bursts of gunfire were reported near President Patrice Talon’s residence in the Guézo district of Cotonou. Within hours, a group of uniformed soldiers stormed ORTB, the national broadcaster, and declared on live television that they had removed the president, dissolved the government, suspended the Constitution, and closed the country’s borders. The man at the helm of this military takeover was Lieutenant Colonel Pascal Tigri, a name hitherto absent from political discourse, now etched in the nation’s crisis narrative.
They called themselves the Comité Militaire pour la Refondation (Military Committee for Refoundation) and justified their actions with vague references to national mismanagement, rising insecurity in the north, and government “neglect of fallen soldiers”. The language echoed that of other recent military juntas across West Africa, from Bamako to Ouagadougou, as if lifted from the same playbook.
But unlike the successful putsches in neighbouring countries, this attempt failed. By midday, loyalist forces had regained control of strategic sites, arrested at least fourteen mutineers, and restored broadcast channels. President Talon, reportedly unharmed, appeared later in the evening to deliver a calm but firm message: the institutions had held.
No Casualties, But a Broken Spell
Remarkably, and perhaps tellingly, the government reported no fatalities, and no credible independent reports have contradicted this. The operation was short-lived, clean, and contained. Yet its symbolic impact was far more destructive than its material outcome. The Benin coup attempt demolished a long-standing assumption: that Benin was impervious to the tide of coups sweeping through the region.
This assumption had been fragile all along. Beneath the polished electoral surface, military discontent had been brewing. Northern provinces, increasingly targeted by jihadist incursions from the Sahel, have grown resentful of the central government’s slow response. Reports of underpaid soldiers, operational fatigue, and lack of political recognition for fallen servicemen have circulated for months — largely ignored by the international media.
That neglect came home to roost on December 7.
Who Is Pascal Tigri, And Who Stands With Him?
Little is known of Lieutenant Colonel Pascal Tigri before his dramatic appearance on national TV. He was not a household name, nor previously associated with known opposition factions. His motivations remain speculative, but the coordinated nature of the takeover — targeting both the presidential residence and the broadcaster, suggests months of preparation and access to inside intelligence.
The fourteen soldiers arrested in connection with the attempt are all active-duty military personnel. Their exact units, ranks, or affiliations remain undisclosed. No civilian politicians have yet been implicated, but observers have noted the suspicious silence of some opposition figures, and questions linger over whether Tigri acted alone, or with covert backing from disaffected political actors or regional networks.
In an Africa increasingly shaped by military regimes, no coup can be fully domestic.
Why This Attempt Sends Shockwaves Beyond Cotonou
The Benin coup attempt isn’t just a local disruption; it’s a geopolitical tremor. Until now, Benin had been one of the last holdouts in West Africa’s democratic architecture. With Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, and recently Guinea-Bissau all falling into military hands, Benin stood as a supposed buffer, a “proof” that democracy could hold its ground.
That illusion is now shattered.
More worryingly, the events in Cotonou suggest a regional contagion effect. The language used by the mutineers mirrors the justifications used by successful juntas elsewhere: failed governance, insecurity, and honouring soldiers. These are not isolated grievances, they are spreading memes of legitimacy, used to cloak military ambition.
And what happens when such narratives become culturally and politically accepted? Coups become not only thinkable, but imitable.
A Harsh Reality Check for the Talon Administration
Though the Talon government was quick to regain control, its legitimacy has taken a blow. A country truly stable does not need to retake its own state television from uniformed dissidents. A democracy truly rooted does not rely on military firefights to restore constitutional order.
Talon’s image as a rational reformer, more technocrat than tyrant, was never matched by his increasingly tight grip on institutions. Critics have long warned of creeping authoritarianism, media censorship, and judicial overreach. But this coup attempt reveals a deeper vulnerability: disconnection from the armed forces, neglect of the periphery, and erosion of consensus.
As the 2026 presidential election looms, the question is no longer whether Talon will hand over power, but under what conditions, and to whom.
The End of an Illusion
Benin has long been called a “model democracy”, but models are, by nature, idealised. What the Benin coup attempt of December 2025 has revealed is not simply a failed mutiny, but the breakdown of a myth. The myth that Western-sanctioned institutionalism is enough. That electoral cycles prevent authoritarian drift. That “stable” countries are immune from military temptation.
Benin may have averted a crisis, but it has not escaped a reckoning. The spell is broken. What comes next depends not on the suppression of mutineers, but on the government’s ability to restore a national order that is more than legalistic, one that commands loyalty, respect, and faith in the future.
Because the soldiers may have been silenced, but the reasons they reached for the microphone remain.
