{"id":79752,"date":"2025-12-07T13:19:17","date_gmt":"2025-12-07T13:19:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/?p=79752"},"modified":"2025-12-07T13:19:17","modified_gmt":"2025-12-07T13:19:17","slug":"benin-soldiers-announce-coup-presidency-says-talon-safe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/2025\/12\/07\/benin-soldiers-announce-coup-presidency-says-talon-safe\/","title":{"rendered":"Benin Soldiers Announce Coup, Presidency Says Talon Safe"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By Adenike Lawal<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Tension gripped Benin on Sunday after a group of soldiers declared they had overthrown President Patrice Talon, though the presidency insisted he remained safe and that loyal forces were restoring order.<\/p>\n<p>The soldiers, calling themselves the Military Committee for Refoundation (CMR), appeared on state television to announce Talon\u2019s removal, saying he was no longer the country\u2019s legitimate leader.<\/p>\n<p>Their declaration follows a wave of recent coups in West Africa and comes as Benin borders Niger and Burkina Faso, both under military rule.<\/p>\n<p>The French Embassy reported gunfire near Camp Guezo, close to Talon\u2019s residence in Cotonou, urging its citizens to stay indoors.<\/p>\n<p>Presidential officials, however, downplayed the incident, describing it as the action of a \u201csmall dissident faction\u201d that briefly seized the national broadcaster.<\/p>\n<p>They confirmed that Talon, in office since 2016 and set to leave in April, was unharmed and that security forces were reasserting control.<\/p>\n<p>Benin, once coup-prone, has enjoyed relative stability in recent decades. But political tensions have risen ahead of the 2026 transition, particularly following the exclusion of the main opposition from the succession race.<\/p>\n<p>President Talon, 67, credited with driving economic growth, has also faced criticism over democratic backsliding.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Adenike Lawal Tension gripped Benin on Sunday after a group of soldiers declared they had overthrown President Patrice Talon, though the presidency insisted he remained safe and that loyal forces were restoring order. The soldiers, calling themselves the Military Committee for Refoundation (CMR), appeared on state television to announce Talon\u2019s removal, saying he was [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":79753,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1754],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-79752","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-foreign-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79752","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79752"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79752\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":79754,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79752\/revisions\/79754"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/79753"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}