Former presidential aspirant and editor, Dele Momodu, says a last-minute interruption to his planned road trip to Cotonou may have saved him from being caught up in the failed coup attempt in Benin Republic.
Speaking on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily program on Monday, Momodu explained that he was originally scheduled to be inside Benin Republic at the exact moment soldiers attempted to announce a takeover.
He said the unexpected setback that halted his scheduled 5 a.m. departure “was what saved us.”
Momodu described the entire experience as surreal, noting that he had already mapped out a cross-border travel route that seemed familiar to him.
“Yesterday, for me, was very surreal. I was going to wake up in the morning at 5am to go straight to Cotonou, have a quick breakfast and then go to Lomé, and then from Lomé to Ghana. I had made that trip too many times and it’s something I love to do, especially on Sundays, because there would be no traffic,” he said.
The problems, however, began the night before the trip when he discovered that his driver only had a photocopy of the vehicle’s data, a detail he considered too risky for a border trip. The missing original documents sparked a frantic nightly search.
“Unfortunately, the night before I had all my international documents, but then I asked my driver for the details of the vehicle, and he only had the photocopy. I was not comfortable with that. I searched everywhere, in my two offices in Lagos. I searched throughout the night, and maybe around 11 or so, I decided that we must have ruined the trip,” Momodu said.
He immediately called his traveling companions to cancel. “I called my friend Rotimi with whom we were traveling together, along with another friend. I called everyone in the middle of the night and told them I was sorry I couldn’t make the trip, and that’s what saved us,” he added.
Momodu linked the near-miss to divine intervention, saying his upbringing in an Aladura church has shaped his belief in spirituality.
“Somehow God must have intervened because we would have been inside Benin Republic at the time this melodrama was underway,” he said, adding that his vehicle, registered in Nigeria, could easily have attracted attention.
Momodu expressed relief that the coup attempt was thwarted, but expressed concern about what he described as a democratic backslide in West Africa.
“I thought democracy had taken root in Africa, but we seem to be going backwards, which is very unfortunate. Thank God it was quickly aborted,” he said.
The Benin government announced on Sunday that it had thwarted a coup attempt after a group of soldiers appeared on state television claiming to have overthrown President Patrice Talon.
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