Benin Coup Attempt to Oust Talon Has Been Foiled, Interior Minister Says

A spokesman said 14 members of the military had been arrested. The West African country’s president, who was not seen for hours, appeared on television Sunday night and said the coup plot would “not go unpunished.”

The West African country of Benin was thrown into a state of confusion on Sunday after an attempted coup by members of the military, which the government insisted had been quelled, raised questions about the nation’s stability.

Patrice Talon, president of Benin, appeared on state television Sunday evening after a day of chaos and concern about his whereabouts, saying the treachery would “not go unpunished” and that the situation was “totally under control.”

ECOWAS, a West African regional alliance, which had strongly condemned the coup attempt as “unconstitutional” on social media, said late on Sunday that it had ordered the deployment of a “regional standby force” to defend Benin “with immediate effect.”

Mr. Talon’s appearance on television appeared to lay to rest concerns about his whereabouts following reports earlier in the day of shots heard near his residence.

Wilfried Léandre Houngbedji, a Benin government spokesman, said earlier Sunday evening that Mr. Talon, who had not appeared or made any public statements throughout the day, was not harmed and that 14 soldiers who were part of the coup attempt had been arrested.

But he did not disclose any further details, leaving many questions.

The American Embassy in Benin early on Sunday had reported gunshots in Cotonou, the largest city in the country, and the French Embassy had similarly reported gunshots near the residence of Mr. Talon.

Benin’s interior minister, Alassane Seidou, said on national television that the situation was under control after a “small group of soldiers launched a mutiny with the goal of destabilizing the state and its institutions.” He said government soldiers had stayed “loyal.”

Mr. Houngbedji, the government spokesman, said the coup attempt was the work of Pascal Tigri, a lieutenant commander in the army, who he said was on the run.

Although the government sought to quell concerns, the situation remained murky.

The reports of unrest in Benin come less than two weeks after another report of a coup in West Africa, after President Umaro Sissoco Embaló of Guinea-Bissau was deposed in late November. But the opposition claimed that the coup was “fabricated” to keep him in power, saying that Mr. Embaló had installed allies from the military so that he could rule by proxy.

Instability has rocked Africa in recent years, where nine military takeovers took place from 2020 to 2023 — a number unseen in decades.

Most were in West Africa, where insurgents are expanding outward from the restive Sahel region, the site of about half of all terrorism deaths worldwide in 2023. Now, millions are being displaced in West Africa as insurgents — emboldened by successes in the landlocked countries of Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger — move south toward coastal nations along the Atlantic Ocean, like Benin.

Benin, a country of more than 14 million that suffers from widespread poverty, has long been an outlier in its restive and unstable region.

While a wave of coups swept through neighboring lands, often following widespread jihadist attacks, Benin kept these at bay until a series of such attacks this year, including one that killed more than 50 Beninese soldiers in April, the deadliest attack in the country’s history.

Benin has its own history of coups: It became independent from France in 1960 and, by 1977, had endured six military takeovers. But in the decades after Benin held free elections in 1991, it has enjoyed relative political stability.

Mr. Talon was elected in 2016. But by 2019, he had begun to tighten his grip on power.

He is set to leave office in April after two terms in office, which is the limit in Benin. Romuald Wadagni, the finance minister and a close ally of Mr. Talon, is seen as the front-runner to replace him, in part because the top opposition candidate was barred from running, The Associated Press reported.

The opposition has alleged irregularities in a vote in Parliament last month to extend presidential terms from five years to seven years and create a new legislative body that could include Mr. Talon, The A.P. reported.

The opposition said that such a legislative body could give Mr. Talon significant influence after office.

“There are grievances in the country: The regime is repressive and the main opposition party has been barred from contesting in the elections,” Beverly Ochieng, a leading regional security analyst based in Dakar, Senegal, said on Sunday in a phone interview.

But even though Mr. Talon’s government is unpopular, she said, Benin’s population did not jump at the chance to oust him on Sunday.

“The soldiers seem to have misjudged the political mood in the country and the ability of President Talon to re-establish control,” she said. “They thought people would come out to support them.”

ECOWAS said the troops it was sending to help stabilize Benin would be drawn from a 5,000-strong standby force, mobilized from four member countries and created earlier this year in response to persistent coups and insurgency in the region. It remained unclear how many soldiers might be deployed and when they would arrive.

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