It's no longer News that the president of Guinea Bissau Umaro Sissoco Emblao has been ousted from office and placed under house arrest by a group of military armed men who stormed the capital with witnesses having said to hear gun fires around the presidential palace.
The group later appeared on TV to make a pronouncement declaring an overnight curfew and shutting down all borders. This move is making Guinea Bissau the seventh African country with a successful military coup since 2020 with Mali as the first and Burkina faso the most significant and talk about.
Since the coup many African leaders has condemned it with international bodies lending their voices which I don't think will have any effect with reasons. It's been over 5 years and counting since the first coup in Mali
The president in a phone call interview with France24 told the brocaster “I have been deposed,” adding that he was “currently at the general staff headquarters”.
The group which call themselves the "High Military Command for the Restoration of Order" led by Head of the Military Office of the Presidency Brigadier General Dinis Incanha. In the appearance the group said they were acting to thwart a plot by unnamed politicians who had "the support of a well-known drug baron to destabilize the country"
The head of the main opposition PAIGC party, Domingos Simoes Pereira, has also been detained including other staffs and members of parliament thereby suspending all parliamentary activities, all electoral process has also been halted until further notice.
It'll be shocking to understand that the coup announcement came just a day before the results was to be announced with observers from the African Union and ECOWAS having said that both parties have agreed to accept the result as the will of the people without causing chaos in respect to rule of law.
The mission observers include Mozambique’s former President Filipe Jacinto Nyusi and Nigeria’s former President Goodluck Jonathan, who has also lend their voice in calling the regional bodies to take the necessary steps to restore constitutional order.
“We urge the armed forces to immediately release the detained officials to allow the country’s electoral process to proceed to its conclusion,” the statement from the Economic Community of West African States and African Union observers said.
We'll see how the incident will unveil as they've been a threat by the military to shutdown Internet access and the ECOWAS observers still trapped in the country amidst the lockdown.