ECOWAS’s Double Standard: Guinea Bissau vs. Benin Republic

When coup plotters took over Guinea-Bissau in November 2025, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) sent a delegation of diplomats to talk, then suspended the West African nation from its decision-making apparatus. When coup plotters took over Benin Republic – another ECOWAS member – the very next month, ECOWAS, represented by Nigeria and under the directives of France, launched airstrikes against Benin’s capital city and pledged a full military follow-up – now underway – to “preserve constitutional order”.

Two coups. Two very different reactions.

Where did this double standard come from? In what constitutional document was it written? Certainly not the 1993 ECOWAS Treaty or the 1999 Nigerian Constitution.

Perhaps it was written elsewhere, by the same external forces that ordered Nigeria, a supposedly sovereign African nation, to attack another sovereign African nation that posed no threat to its national security.