What happened in Guinea Bissau wasn’t a coup. The President (Umaro Embalo) was the one who announced the coup. While the coup took place, the president was the one calling media organisations to say there was a coup. I’m a Nigerian, and I know how heads of states are treated when… https://t.co/QSs0tRcGwu pic.twitter.com/3E9OGiOkUG
— Nigerian Affairs Journal (@NigAffairs) November 28, 2025
Former President Goodluck Jonathan, speaking in a video interview obtained by Saturday PUNCH after his evacuation from Guinea-Bissau, said the recent military takeover in the country was more distressing to him than losing the 2015 presidential election to Muhammadu Buhari, noting his long involvement in restoring democracy there.
“What happened in Guinea Bissau is quite disturbing to me, a person who believes in democracy. In fact, I feel more pain than the day I called Buhari to congratulate him when I lost the election as a sitting president,” Jonathan said, adding that he found it troubling that President Umaro Embaló announced his own “arrest” and a coup while still communicating freely with the media.
Questioning the episode, he stated: “What happened in Guinea Bissau, I would not call it a coup; it was not a coup. For lack of a better word, I will say it was a ceremonial coup,” stressing that “there is no way there will be a military coup at a time they were about to announce election results and the president was the person who announced the coup.”
Jonathan urged ECOWAS and the African Union to release the full election results, called for the release of opposition leader Fernando Dias from military custody, and explained that he returned to Nigeria aboard an Ivorian aircraft because Côte d’Ivoire secured landing clearance faster than Nigeria for his evacuation.