The Nigerian Army confirmed on 26 May 2026 that it deployed a company of soldiers to the Republic of Benin in April 2026, covering the country’s presidential election and the subsequent inauguration of its new head of state – a mission that began as a direct outgrowth of Nigeria’s armed intervention to suppress a coup attempt five months earlier.
Acting Director of Army Public Relations Colonel Appolonia Anele disclosed the deployment in a statement, saying President Bola Tinubu had personally approved it. The force operated under Operation ATILEHIN ALAFIYA II (“Restore Peace II”) – a designation that places it in direct sequence with the original operation launched in response to the December 2025 mutiny. A company in the Nigerian Army’s structure typically numbers between 80 and 150 soldiers.
The troops were not assigned election monitoring roles. Instead, they conducted area patrols, monitored key infrastructure, and maintained a visible security presence across Cotonou and its surrounding areas ahead of and during the 12 April presidential poll. The operation then extended to provide a layered security perimeter for the inauguration of President Romuald Wadagni, Benin’s former finance minister, who was sworn in on 24 May 2026 at the Congress Palace in Cotonou. Nigerian Vice President Kashim Shettima attended on behalf of President Tinubu.
The Nigerian Army deployed a capable mix of Chinese-built Dong Feng Mengshi ATVs, BigFoot MRAPs, Nigerian-made Vanquisher All Terrain Combat Vehicle and Landcruiser gun trucks.
The Army Chief of Staff, Lieutenant General Waidi Shaibu, addressed the deployment publicly at the First Bi-Annual Conference of 2026 in Abuja on 18 May, framing it as a test of the force’s rapid deployment capacity. “We are also not oblivious to the security situation around countries contiguous to Nigeria, which necessitated the deployment of troops for Operations Atileyin Alaafia 1 and 2 to restore democracy, ensure security, and guarantee the peaceful conduct of elections in the Republic of Benin,” he stated.
The Chief of Army Staff Lieutenant General Waidi Shaibu commended the troops for their discipline, resilience and exemplary conduct, noting that their performance reflects the core values and operational excellence of the Nigerian Army.
From Coup Suppression to Electoral Security
The April deployment traces directly to events on 7 December 2025, when a faction of the Beninese Armed Forces led by Lieutenant Colonel Pascal Tigri seized the state broadcaster SRTB and announced the removal of then-President Patrice Talon. The group, calling itself the Military Committee for Refoundation (Comite Militaire pour la Refondation), deployed armoured vehicles to multiple points in Cotonou and attempted to seize the presidential residence, where Talon’s Republican Guard was already positioned to resist.
Benin’s government sent two formal requests to Abuja within hours: one for “immediate Nigerian air support” and a second for “protection of constitutional institutions.” The requests fell within the legal framework of the 1999 Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Protocol on Conflict Prevention and the 2001 Protocol on Democracy and Good Governance, both of which permit military action when a member state requests assistance against an unconstitutional change of government. The Nigerian Air Force was over Cotonou within hours, conducting precision strikes on Camp Togbin near the airport – the mutineers’ main stronghold – while ECOWAS Standby Force ground elements from Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Cote d’Ivoire, and Ghana simultaneously moved to secure the state television station the plotters had seized before dawn.
The intervention neutralised the attempt within 48 hours. The Nigerian Senate formally endorsed the deployment on 9 December 2025, its first vote to sanction a foreign military operation since the 2017 Gambia crisis, when ECOWAS forces removed former President Yahya Jammeh. The speed of the Nigerian response – airstrikes and organised ground forces inside Benin before most regional bodies had finished issuing statements – drew attention from analysts tracking West Africa’s coup wave. As The Conversation noted on 9 December 2025, ECOWAS intervention “likely played an important role in undermining the coup’s momentum,” but the hard operational work was Nigerian.
A review published by African Security Analysis in January 2026 noted that approximately 200 to 250 ECOWAS troops remained in Benin after the December action, drawn primarily from Nigeria and Cote d’Ivoire, though their formal mandate, rules of engagement, and planned duration had not been publicly confirmed at that point.
The continuation of the mission through Benin’s election season reflects Nigeria’s calculation that the structural conditions for instability remained in place. Benin sits on the southern flank of the Sahel crisis; its northern provinces have faced increasing pressure from jihadist groups affiliated with al-Qaeda’s regional branch, the Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims (JNIM). Wadagni, a technocrat who served as finance minister for a decade under Talon, acknowledged the security challenge directly at his inauguration, pledging that “Benin will not give in to fear nor complacency.”
For Nigeria, the sequence from December’s air campaign to May’s inauguration security detail cements what has been the country’s most assertive regional military posture in years. At the Army conference in Abuja, Lieutenant General Shaibu also stressed the need for “joint and inter-agency cooperation” and called for deeper integration of “technology, innovation, and real-time intelligence” into ongoing operations – language that points toward continued investment in the intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) and precision-strike capabilities that made December’s rapid response possible.
The next question for regional planners is whether the Benin model is repeatable. Nigeria demonstrated it can move fast and strike precisely in a coastal urban environment. What remains less defined is the standing multilateral architecture – the ECOWAS Standby Force lacks a permanent rapid-reaction trigger, and the December intervention effectively assembled and deployed faster than the institutional process that was meant to authorise it. If the December 2025 Benin operation was the proof of concept, the April-May 2026 mission is the follow-through – and together they set an expectation that Nigeria now intends to hold.