Former PDP presidential aspirant and publisher, Dele Momodu, has recounted how an unexpected disruption to his travel plans may have spared him from being caught in Benin Republic’s recent foiled coup attempt.
Momodu told Sunrise Daily on Monday that he had been scheduled to travel to Cotonou early Sunday morning right when a group of soldiers briefly claimed to have ousted President Patrice Talon on state television.
“I was going to wake up at 5 a.m. to head to Cotonou, have breakfast, and continue to Lome, then Ghana. I had made this trip many times,” Momodu said.
The turn of events began the night before when he discovered that his driver only had a photocopy of the vehicle documents.
Unable to locate the originals after searching his offices in Lagos, Momodu decided to postpone the trip.
“I immediately called my travel partners to cancel the journey. That was what saved us,” he said, attributing his safety to divine intervention.
“I was born in an Aladura church, so I believe God intervened. We would have been right inside Benin Republic during the chaos.”
Momodu noted that his Nigerian-registered car could have made him highly visible amid the unrest.
Reflecting on past experiences, he drew parallels to his 1995 escape from Nigeria via the Seme border into Cotonou, before eventually reaching Ghana and later England.
The foiled coup, which Benin authorities confirmed on Sunday, is part of a worrying trend of political instability in West Africa, following similar incidents in Niger, Burkina Faso, Mali, Guinea, and Guinea-Bissau.
Momodu described the incident as surreal and expressed concern about the state of democracy in Africa.
“I thought democracy had taken root, but it seems we are going backwards. Let’s thank God it was quickly aborted,” he said.
