Africa’s expanding coup belt gained a new front line on December 7, when soldiers appeared on Benin’s state television claiming power. Led by Lieutenant Colonel Pascal Tigri and calling themselves the “Military Committee for Refoundation”, eight uniformed men declared President Patrice Talon “removed from office”, suspended the constitution, dissolved state institutions, and ordered border closures.

Observers prepared for a now-familiar scenario: A forced resignation, leaders detained or under house arrest, and routine condemnations from the African Union (AU) and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).

However, by midday, those expectations were upended.

Within hours of the broadcast, Interior Minister Alassane Seidou announced that the coup attempt had been thwarted.

Talon reappeared publicly, on TV, and authorities reported the arrest of at least 14 plotters, including 12 soldiers.

The announcement and subsequent drama sent shockwaves across the region, yet it was not a sudden rupture, but the visible peak of a deeper political crisis years in the making.

The attempted coup was merely the final symptom.

In its aftermath, order was restored, but not legitimacy.

Benin’s real coup – the systematic overthrow of its democracy – had already occurred under Talon.

All the attempted takeover did was to lay bare a political system that had already been undermined from within.

Before Talon came to power in April 2016, Benin was widely recognised for its peaceful transfers of power, a dispensation anchored in the February 1990 National Conference, which ended one-party rule and laid the foundations for a multi-party democratic system.

Advertisement

Talon, a multi-millionaire cotton magnate, positioned himself as a reformer in his first electoral campaign, promising political, administrative, and economic change for the better.

Once elected, his course shifted.

Instead of strengthening democracy, Talon began to systematically dismantle the democratic institutions that had made Benin, a country of nearly 15 million people, known as an early democratic success in Africa.

Since 2016, Benin’s democratic institutions have been hollowed out through legal engineering, judicial capture, and electoral rules rewritten to exclude opponents from power.

Talon began quietly with court-packing in 2017-18, using presidential appointments to remake the Constitutional Court into a compliant body. Within a year, it would legitimise electoral exclusion and constitutional changes that consolidated executive control.

The timeline of extreme political regression is instructive.

The first decisive legal break came in April 2019, when a new electoral code introduced a “certificate of conformity” requirement, empowering authorities to disqualify entire opposition lists from that year’s parliamentary elections.

Consequently, only two pro-government parties, the Progressive Union for Renewal (UPR) and the Republican Bloc (BR), appeared on the ballot in the April 2019 parliamentary elections.

All major opposition blocs, including alliances linked to former Speaker Bruno Amoussou, who was once aligned with Talon, were barred.

Amnesty International documented a wave of arbitrary arrests, detentions and crackdowns on peaceful protesters and journalists in the run-up to the 2019 vote.

The public reacted.

Voter turnout tanked from nearly two-thirds in the previous election to just 27 percent.

In the ensuing months, widespread protests erupted in Cotonou, Porto-Novo, and elsewhere.

Security forces responded with force, killing several protesters and arresting dozens.

In June 2019, former President Thomas Boni Yayi endured 52 days of house arrest over alleged election protest incitement.

Consequently, parliament became entirely opposition-free, and reviving political dissent after this upheaval became perilous.

The transformation was complete by 2021: In the April presidential election, held amid violent protests and a boycott by several opposition parties, vote counting began under an atmosphere of intimidation, and civil society observers reported widespread irregularities, underscoring how the political environment had changed. Talon won re-election with an impressive 86 percent of the vote.

Advertisement

After this, any illusion of democracy in the country disappeared, and all political competition was squashed through politicised arrests, show trials, and lengthy imprisonments.

In December 2021, constitutional scholar Joel Aivo, a prominent opponent of President Patrice Talon, was sentenced to 10 years by the Court for the Repression of Economic Offences and Terrorism (CRIET) after being convicted of plotting against the state and money laundering.

Days later, the same court sentenced another Talon opponent, former Justice Minister Reckya Madougou, to 20 years for “complicity in terrorist acts” in a verdict her lawyers and international rights organisations described as politically motivated.

By 2022, more than 50 opposition figures had been imprisoned on charges ranging from terrorism to economic sabotage, including 30 freed during French President Emmanuel Macron’s 2022 visit, although high-profile leaders Aivo and Madougou remained jailed.

Repression, however, was only one part of the project.

Institutional entrenchment followed.

Just weeks before the attempted coup, on November 16, parliament passed amendments extending presidential and legislative terms from five to seven years and creating a partly appointed senate.

The amendment, while retaining the two-term presidential limit, passed with 90 votes in favour and 19 against. Opposition lawmakers criticised both its timing and long-term implications, arguing it would disrupt the political calendar and recalibrate the balance of power between state institutions.

By the time these warnings were voiced, the damage was already done.

So the soldiers who appeared on television and claimed power two days ago did not destroy Benin’s democracy.

They revealed how far it had already decayed.

Benin fits a broader African trajectory of term-stretching in Zimbabwe and Togo, constitutional conflict in Zambia, and the spectre of military intervention experienced in Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso.

Public opinion underscores the dilemma.

Afrobarometer’s latest survey across 39 African countries finds that while 66 percent still prefer democracy, more than half now consider military intervention acceptable when leaders abuse their power.

In Benin, as elsewhere, confidence in the military now exceeds trust in political institutions, amid declining faith in elections and democratic governance.

Courts widely viewed as politicised and polls stripped of credibility have eroded voters’ sense of agency.

Coups seldom arise spontaneously from military barracks.

Instead, they follow the systematic erosion of democratic institutions through judicial capture, electoral manipulation, and constitutional changes that entrench incumbents.

Elections are still held, and courts still convene, but they no longer function as instruments of accountability. They serve as the procedural shell of a system that has been emptied of political competition and choice.

When civilian institutions collapse, militaries exploit the vacuum.

They do not repair it.

In Benin, this progression is unmistakable.

Advertisement

The AU and ECOWAS condemned the attempted coup and pledged support for constitutional order, but stopped short of sanctions, sustained mediation, or binding guarantees of electoral intervention.

These days, democratic backsliding in Africa produces statements, not consequences.

The failure of the coup attempt in Benin will not usher in stability.

On the contrary, the failed coup risks speeding securitisation and prompting further unrest.

The plotters said their reasons were rooted in policy failures. They cited Talon’s handling of the threat from al-Qaeda and ISIL (ISIS)-linked fighters in northern Benin, the neglect of fallen soldiers and their families, and unpopular tax and spending decisions.

Genuine recovery demands reversing years of democratic backsliding.

Political prisoners should be freed, special courts abolished or reformed, and unfair electoral laws scrapped.

Electoral commissions need full independence from executive control.

The constitution itself needs an open, inclusive review, with civil society, opposition groups and independent institutions at the table.

These demands are not radical.

They represent the democratic minimum necessary for legitimacy and stability.

Talon entered office as Benin’s democratic hope, a businessman promising to clean up governance and modernise the state.

Nearly a decade later, he embodies the return of Africa’s post-independence strongman: A throwback to an era of control, fear, and arrested possibility.

What Talon did through law is no less violent than what soldiers attempted with guns on December 7.

Still, Benin’s window for reform remains open.

Only just.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.