One aspect of the botched Benin Republic putsch that has left many inside and outside Nigeria seemingly disconcerted is the baleful involvement of Nigeria in suppressing the mutiny and thwarting the coup
Last Sunday, the tranquillity of the small West African nation, the Benin Republic, was punctured by a blaze of gunshots as a motley crowd of mutinous soldiers stormed the seat of power in Port Novo and announced the overthrow of President Patrice Talon’s government. However, forces within the nation’s army loyal to the president were able to galvanise themselves and snuff out the danger, preventing what would have been the fall of another member state of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) into the hands of a junta after the region was rocked by a spate of putsches in the last five years that saw the toppling of three countries, Mali, Niger Republic and Burkina Faso, by the nations’ military.
One aspect of the botched Benin Republic putsch that has left many inside and outside Nigeria seemingly disconcerted is the baleful involvement of Nigeria in suppressing the mutiny and thwarting the coup. No sooner had the news broke than Nigerian fighter jets were in Beninoise airspace to rout the putschists and avert the coup. According to reports, some areas of Cotonou were bombed by the Nigerian Air Force leading to the death of at least nine people. The irony of a nation plagued by jarring violence, wanton killing and general insecurity racing to put down a coup attempt in a neighbouring country is not lost on many right-thinking and conscientious Nigerians.
While the debates over the morality, legality, and logic behind Nigeria’s military intervention in the Benin Republic rage on, another unsettling news item involving the Nigerian government and one of the belligerent nations of the Alliance of Sahel States (AES), Burkina Faso, has emerged. The Burkina Faso government detained eleven Nigerian military officers after their aircraft made an emergency landing in the country, Burkinabè security sources told the BBC. The Air Force C-130 aircraft was said to have entered Burkina Faso’s airspace on Monday without authorisation, according to the country’s Territorial Administration Minister Emile Zerbo. The AES described the landing as “unfriendly”.
The news triggered a mélange of conspiracy theories with the strongest and most widespread being that the cargo plane has something to do with the Benin Republic coup. Those, including geopolitical analysts, who hold this notion asserted that the Nigerian government at the behest of France was trying to oust the Ibrahim Traore led Junta while the attention of the world was still fixated on the unfolding development in Benin Republic.
The Nigerian Air Force (NAF) said the incident has nothing to do with any hostile or subversive covert military operation that undermined Burkina Faso sovereignty and territorial integrity, adding that the aircraft that landed in Bobo-Dioulasso, the West African nation second largest city, on Monday night did so for safety reasons and “in accordance with standard safety procedures and international aviation protocols.” In a Tuesday statement, its spokesperson, Ehimen Ejodame, said the crew of the NAF C-130 aircraft “observed a technical concern which necessitated a precautionary landing in Bobo-Dioulasso, Burkina Faso, the nearest airfield.”
The explanation and reason provided by NAF sound plausible and reasonable on the surface but the sheer coincidence of the incident with the suppression of the coup in Benin raises concerns and makes it difficult for their reason to stand firmly under the intense scrutiny. Even if we are to believe that the reason provided by NAF is honest and genuine, the Nigerian government’s cosy relationship with France, with which these renegade military governments of the AES states are at odds, has, for them, turned Nigeria into a hostile nation. Nigeria has not covered itself in glory by becoming the henchman whom imperialist France can rely on to help do its dirty job in the West African region. We can’t afford to be a pawn in the dirty geopolitical game of a ruthless and dangerous foreign nation.
While the AES has been in a perpetual paranoid state of victimhood and feeding on real and imagined colonial, historical, and modern injustice, they have leveraged the geopolitical leaning and regional posturing of Nigeria to consolidate their hold on power.
Discussion about this post