Former presidential aspirant of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Publisher, Dele Momodu, says a last-minute disruption to his planned road trip to Cotonou may have saved him from being caught in the failed coup attempt in Benin Republic.
Momodu shared this on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily on Monday, noting that he was originally supposed to be in Benin Republic at the exact time the coup scare unfolded.
He explained that the unexpected issue that halted his 5 a.m. departure “was what saved us.”
Momodu described the entire experience as unreal, adding that he had already mapped out a familiar travel route.
According to him, “Yesterday to me was very surreal. I was going to wake up in the morning at 5 am to head straight to Cotonou, have a quick breakfast, and then head out to Lome, and then from Lome head out to Ghana. I had done 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 problem began the night before the trip when he discovered that his driver only had a photocopy of the vehicle particulars, prompting an urgent search.
“Unfortunately, the night before I had all my international but then I asked my driver for the vehicle particulars, and he only had the photocopy. I wasn’t comfortable with that. I searched everywhere, my two offices in Lagos. I searched in the night, and maybe around 11 or thereabout, I decided that look, we must have botched the trip,” Momodu said.
He added that he immediately contacted his travel companions to cancel the journey. “I called my friend Rotimi… whom we were travelling together with, along with another friend… I called everybody in the middle of the night and said I’m sorry we won’t be able to make the trip, and that was what saved us.”
Momodu attributed the near-miss to divine intervention, saying his faith leads him to believe he was protected from being in Benin during the unrest. “I was born in an Aladura church. So I believed in spirituality, and I believe that somehow God must have intervened because we would have been right inside Benin Republic, as at the time this melodrama was ongoing.”
He noted that travelling in a Nigerian-registered vehicle could have made him easily noticeable. He welcomed the news that the attempted coup was foiled, recalling his long-standing opposition to military rule.
Momodu also compared the incident to his 1995 escape from Nigeria, saying the failed coup revived difficult memories and raised concerns about democracy in Africa.
Benin’s government announced on Sunday that it had stopped an attempted coup after soldiers briefly declared on state television that they had removed President Patrice Talon.
Recent years have seen several coups in West Africa, including in Niger, Burkina Faso, Mali, Guinea, and most recently, Guinea-Bissau.