Misreading of Nigeria’s intervention in Benin’s coup

BY LEKAN OLAYIWOLA

Nigeria’s rapid quashing of the attempted coup in neighbouring Benin sparked anger and disbelief at home. Citizens watched the speed, clarity, and decisiveness of the intervention and asked: if the state can act this fast abroad, why does insecurity still define life at home? Some accused the government of hypocrisy, protecting foreign governments while abandoning its own people.

Others saw evidence of Nigeria as a regional proxy for Western powers or recklessly entangled in global struggles, while domestic violence continued unchecked. Flawed as these reactions may be, they expose a deep crisis of trust: every display of state capacity is met with suspicion, revealing that the true disconnect lies not abroad, but in Nigeria’s fractured relationship with its own citizens.

Two Different Logics of War

Nigeria’s internal struggle against insurgency, banditry, and organised criminal violence is asymmetric warfare against non-state actors embedded within civilian populations, sustained by poverty, displacement, grievance, and fear. Such wars are slow, intelligence-dependent, morally fragile, and brutally complex. Progress is incremental, reversals are common, and victory depends less on firepower than on information, legitimacy, and community cooperation.

Quashing a coup is a different kind of conflict altogether. It is state-to-state deterrence, executed within severely compressed timeframes. Coups succeed or fail in hours, sometimes minutes. Speed and decisiveness are not optional; they are the strategy. Delay equals collapse. In these moments, clarity of command and rapid mobilisation matter more than the prolonged social repair that counter-insurgency demands.

Regional Security Is Not Domestic Policing

Nigeria’s intervention in Benin was not an extension of domestic counter-terror operations, nor a diversion from them, but a discrete response to an unconstitutional seizure of power in a neighbouring state. Nigeria’s long-standing role within ECOWAS is neither charitable militarism nor impulsive adventurism. It is collective security enforcement, anchored in treaties Nigeria helped design, fund, and uphold for decades.

From Liberia and Sierra Leone in the 1990s to Guinea-Bissau and The Gambia, Nigeria has repeatedly absorbed the cost of stabilising a volatile sub-region. Counter-insurgency, coup deterrence, and regional security enforcement should not be conflated. A fire brigade that quickly extinguishes a neighbour’s kitchen fire has not proven it can rebuild a city destroyed by years of arson. The skills, timelines, and conditions are not the same.

Nigeria Was Not Acting Alone and Not Acting for France

Claims that Nigeria acted as a regional enforcer for France or Western interests resonate because of Africa’s history of foreign interference. Yet Nigeria has long been the military and diplomatic backbone of ECOWAS, acting first when instability erupts due to its capacity and exposure, not because of external control.

In Benin, the government requested assistance, and Nigeria responded within ECOWAS protocols on unconstitutional changes of government. This was institutional duty, not adventurism, and does not compromise non-alignment. Nigeria’s foreign policy balances sovereignty with responsibility. Suggesting it “chose Benin over Nigerians” misreads security realities: in an interconnected region, instability abroad eventually affects domestic safety.

What Nigerians’ Anger Reveals

Nigerians’ anger stems largely from accumulated trauma. For years, rural and peripheral communities have lived under siege; banditry, kidnapping, terrorism, and criminal militias are daily realities. Villages survive with minimal state presence; families bury loved ones without justice or explanation.

In such conditions, every display of state competence sparks painful comparisons: if the state can act decisively abroad, why not here? Rapid domestic mobilisation remains uneven. When legitimacy erodes, all actions are mistrusted—neutrality feels like betrayal, necessary interventions like abandonment. The Benin episode exposes not just insecurity, but collapsed interpretive trust.

The Trust–Insecurity Death Spiral

Nigeria’s security crisis is sustained by broken relationships between citizens and the state. Where trust collapses, intelligence dries up. Communities stop sharing information, either out of fear or resentment. Cooperation gives way to silence. Armed groups exploit this vacuum, embedding themselves within traumatised populations by offering protection, income, or revenge where the state is absent or distrusted.

The result is a vicious, self-reinforcing cycle. Insecurity deepens mistrust. Mistrust weakens intelligence. Weak intelligence prolongs insecurity. Each failure feeds the next. This is why Nigeria can move swiftly to neutralise a coup across borders yet struggle to suppress armed groups at home. Counter-insurgency is not won by speed alone. It is won by legitimacy.

The Real Gap Was Narrative, Not Action

The government’s most consequential oversight in the Benin episode was not the intervention itself, but the unconvincing explanation. No sustained effort to clarify the difference between coup deterrence and counter-terrorism. No serious attempt to situate the action within ECOWAS obligations. No clear connection was drawn between regional stability and Nigeria’s own security interests. Most damagingly, there was little acknowledgement of citizens’ exhaustion and fear.

Silence created a vacuum, and outrage rushed in to fill it. In societies where trust has been battered, narrative is not propaganda; it is governance. Explaining why actions are taken is not a weakness. It is a form of respect. When leaders fail to communicate moral and strategic reasoning, citizens assume the worst, not because they are irrational, but because past experience has taught them disbelief.

Legitimacy and Crisis Communication as Firewall

Security is not merely the absence of violence. It is the presence of dignity. Populations that feel seen, protected, and respected become the strongest intelligence network any state can possess. Those who feel ignored or abused withdraw, resist, or adapt in ways that undermine collective safety.

Regional leadership and domestic legitimacy are not competing priorities. They are mutually reinforcing. Nigeria cannot anchor ECOWAS abroad while neglecting empathy at home. Rebuilding trust requires more than operations; it demands a deliberate action plan, including legitimacy and crisis communication as governance.

Rebuilding trust cannot rest on government statements or military action alone; it requires a civic infrastructure that penetrates daily life. Traditional rulers, religious leaders, civil society actors, and the National Orientation Agency are the connective tissue between state and citizen. Their moral authority and credibility ensure that explanations of ECOWAS obligations or acknowledgements of trauma are heard as empathy, not propaganda.

Civic education must translate interventions into local idioms, create feedback loops, and foster dialogue. Community repair through schools, clinics, and accountable policing becomes classrooms of legitimacy. Security framed as protecting citizens with dignity, reinforced by civil society monitoring, ensures legitimacy and communication, together forming Nigeria’s true firewall.

Lekan Olayiwola is a peace & conflict researcher and policy analyst. He can be reached at [email protected]