A Group of military officers announced on Wednesday that it had taken control in coup-prone Guinea-Bissau, just a day before the scheduled release of results from a fiercely contested presidential election in the West Africa nation.
In a statement delivered on state television, the military’s spokesperson, Diniz N’Tchama, said Army officers had removed President Umaro Sissoco Embaló from power, halted the electoral process, closed the country’s borders, and imposed a curfew.
The announcement came shortly after Embaló told France 24 that he had been deposed, and the Army announced the creation of “The High Military Command for the Restoration of Order,” which they said would oversee the nation until further notice.
According to the Army, the officers seized power in response to what they described as a destabilisation plot orchestrated by “certain national politicians” and “well-known national and foreign drug barons,” as well as an alleged effort to manipulate the election results.
The officers did not say whether Embaló had been taken into custody, and his whereabouts remained unclear.
It remains unclear whether the army officers enjoyed the support of Guinea-Bissau’s fragmented military or whether they had established full control over the country of about two million people.
This latest outbreak of unrest in Guinea-Bissau is coming a few hours after eyewitnesses said gunfire erupted on Wednesday near the headquarters of Guinea-Bissau’s election commission, as well as close to the presidential palace and the interior ministry, just a day before provisional results from the tense vote were expected to be released.
According to Reuters, the gunfire lasted for about an hour but appeared to have stopped by 1400 GMT, and it was not immediately clear who was involved in the shooting.
There was a heavy military presence outside the presidential palace. The news agency quoted a spokesperson for Embalo, Antonio Yaya Seidy, as saying that unidentified gunmen attacked the election commission to prevent an announcement of the vote results.
Seidy alleged that the men were affiliated with a major contender in the election, Fernando Dias, without providing evidence.
The coup-prone West African country held presidential and legislative elections on Sunday, which pit incumbent President Umaro Sissoco Embalo against Dias, and both sides claimed victory in the first round earlier this week.
Embalo was seeking to become the first president in three decades to win a second consecutive term in Guinea-Bissau.
Pereira is the leader of the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC), the party that led the fight for independence from Portugal in the 1960s and 1970s.
The PAIGC was, for the first time, barred from fielding candidates in the elections this year after authorities said it filed papers late.
However, former prime minister Domingos Simoes Pereira, who lost to Embaló in a disputed 2019 runoff and is backing Dias in the current election, said Dias had no connection to the incident.
Pereira added he suspected Embalo was trying to simulate a coup so that he could declare an emergency, having determined he would be named the loser of the election, though he did not provide evidence for the claim.
Meanwhile, Embalo told Reuters that he had survived three coup attempts, but his critics have accused him of manufacturing crises as an excuse for crackdowns.
Recall that gunfire rang out for hours in the capital in December 2023 in what Embalo’s government said was an attempted putsch, leading to his decision to dissolve the parliament in response, and the country has gone without a functioning legislature ever since.
Guinea-Bissau, a small coastal nation between Senegal and Guinea, saw at least nine coups between 1974, when it gained independence from Portugal, and 2020, when Embalo took office.
Nanji is an investigative journalist with the ICIR. She has years of experience in reporting and broadcasting human angle stories, gender inequalities, minority stories, and human rights issues. She has documented sexual war crimes in armed conflict, sex for grades in Nigerian Universities, harmful traditional practices and human trafficking.