{"id":82409,"date":"2026-02-02T08:57:26","date_gmt":"2026-02-02T08:57:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/?p=82409"},"modified":"2026-02-02T08:57:26","modified_gmt":"2026-02-02T08:57:26","slug":"why-military-initially-denied-attempted-coup-defence-minister","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/2026\/02\/02\/why-military-initially-denied-attempted-coup-defence-minister\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Military Initially Denied Attempted Coup -Defence Minister"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By Onyeanya Ebere Immaculata<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Defence Minister Christopher Musa has explained why the military initially downplayed reports of an attempted coup before confirming that some officers were involved in a plot to overthrow the government.<\/p>\n<p>Musa said the early denial aimed to prevent panic, protect ongoing investigations, and avoid wrongly implicating innocent officers. At the time of the arrests, intelligence and internal checks were still underway.<\/p>\n<p>He added that the officers were initially reported as being held for indiscipline and breaches of military regulations, rather than a coup, because authorities wanted to verify facts before making a serious public claim.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking on television, Musa stressed that sensitive national security matters require careful communication. He reassured Nigerians that the armed forces remain loyal to the constitution and the democratic government, and that the situation is under control.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Onyeanya Ebere Immaculata Defence Minister Christopher Musa has explained why the military initially downplayed reports of an attempted coup before confirming that some officers were involved in a plot to overthrow the government. Musa said the early denial aimed to prevent panic, protect ongoing investigations, and avoid wrongly implicating innocent officers. At the time [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":82410,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-82409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82409","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=82409"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82409\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":82411,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82409\/revisions\/82411"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/82410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}