The Minister of Defence, General Christopher Musa (retd.), has disclosed that Nigeria foiled the attempted coup in the Republic of Benin within 12 hours.<\/p>\n
Speaking during an appearance on Channels Television\u2019s Sunday Politics programme, Musa disclosed that the intervention followed the Republic of Benin\u2019s direct request for assistance.<\/p>\n
Responding to a question on whether the President of the Republic of Benin personally contacted President Bola Tinubu, Musa confirmed the direct nature of the appeal.<\/p>\n
\u201cYes, yes, of course. For help, definitely<\/em>,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Asked whether it was a direct call, Musa replied, \u201cIt was a direct call. There was no way we could have taken an action without the President\u2019s approval. So he called directly to Mr President.<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cMr President called and gave the directive, and then we called the troops, and we moved in quickly. Within 12 hours, we had already moved in and were able to secure the area.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n The defence minister said the attempted coup occurred on a Sunday morning and was neutralised before the end of the day.<\/p>\n \u201cJust a few weeks ago, we had to step in to stop the coup in the Benin Republic. That was timely. It happened on a Sunday morning. I was going to church when the issue came up.<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cWe stood there, fought it, and by evening, we had secured the whole place. Our troops are still there. We were just about pulling them out,\u201d<\/em> he said.<\/p>\n According to Musa, the rapid response highlighted Nigeria\u2019s growing military capacity and its commitment to regional stability.<\/p>\n \u201cSo, to tell you the kind of capacities we have and what we can do, we must build our own capacity so that we can secure our region, secure our country, and Africa in general,<\/em>\u201d he added.<\/p>\n The attempted overthrow of the Beninese government, which occurred on December 7, 2025, was short-lived and was later confirmed by Beninese authorities to have been suppressed.<\/p>\n \n <\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Minister of Defence, General Christopher Musa (retd.), has disclosed that Nigeria foiled the attempted coup in the Republic of Benin within 12 hours. Speaking during an appearance on Channels Television\u2019s Sunday Politics programme, Musa disclosed that the intervention followed the Republic of Benin\u2019s direct request for assistance. Responding to a question on whether the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":240849,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[2667,3087,3088],"class_list":["post-240848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-christopher-musa","tag-coup-attempt","tag-republic-of-benin"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/abiaradiostations.com.ng\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Christopher-Musa-.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abiaradiostations.com.ng\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abiaradiostations.com.ng\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abiaradiostations.com.ng\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abiaradiostations.com.ng\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abiaradiostations.com.ng\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=240848"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/abiaradiostations.com.ng\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240848\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abiaradiostations.com.ng\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/240849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abiaradiostations.com.ng\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=240848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abiaradiostations.com.ng\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=240848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abiaradiostations.com.ng\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=240848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}