The Coup That Never Was — and the Warning It Brings

A short while back, a strange tremor ran through Nigeria’s social space.
WhatsApp groups lit up with unverified messages. Anonymous Twitter handles whispered of soldiers plotting to seize power. Some news blogs claimed “top military officers” had been arrested. The rumours spread faster than sense could catch them.

By the end of last week, BusinessDay reported that the Defence Headquarters had issued a categorical denial. There was no coup plot. Brigadier General Tukur Gusau, the military’s spokesperson, called the reports “fabrications and distractions.”

But as often happens in moments of national anxiety, denial did little to calm nerves. The mere suggestion of a coup was enough to jolt the public imagination.

It didn’t help that this happened in the same period the government quietly cancelled the annual Independence Day parade. The timing, many thought, was too neat to be coincidence. According to SBM Intelligence, Google search data spiked. Across the country, people typed the same fearful questions into their phones: “First coup in Nigeria” and “Military coup in Nigeria.”

The ghosts of the past, it seemed, had stirred again.

Nigeria has always had a complicated relationship with its military. Between 1966 and 1999, Nigeria experienced eight successful coups and several failed attempts. The pattern was eerily consistent. A government loses legitimacy, the economy falters, corruption grows, and somewhere in the barracks, a group of young officers decides they can “save” the country.

On January 15, 1966, Major Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu and his fellow conspirators struck, claiming they wanted to end corruption. Six months later, another coup followed, plunging Nigeria into a cycle of revenge and instability that eventually erupted into civil war.

Fast forward to 1983, when General Muhammadu Buhari toppled President Shehu Shagari, accusing the politicians of “indiscipline and waste.” Just two years later, General Ibrahim Babangida overthrew Buhari. Then came Sani Abacha in 1993, whose reign of fear and repression remains one of the darkest chapters in the nation’s history.

When democracy finally returned in 1999, it was a collective sigh of relief. The generation that lived through decrees and midnight arrests had seen enough. The military’s return to the barracks was supposed to mark the end of that era.

But the human memory is short, and history, if left unlearned, repeats itself in whispers first, then in gunfire.

The latest rumour emerged at a tense time. In late September, reports claimed that more than a dozen officers, including a brigadier general and a colonel, had been arrested. The Defence Headquarters denied any coup plot, insisting the detentions were for professional misconduct. Still, the speculation persisted, prompting President Tinubu to replace several top security officials in news I saw a few minutes ago, a move the government described as part of its ongoing effort to strengthen national security amid rising violence in the north.

But that wasn’t the only source of unease. In the same month, Nigerians learned of yet another $2.35 billion borrowing plan. According to the Debt Management Office, $1.229 billion will help finance the 2025 budget, while another $1.118 billion will refinance Eurobonds issued in 2018 and due for repayment next month. In other words, we are borrowing money to pay off old debt. And without the promises to show for it.

The discontent doesn’t end there. On October 18, civic watchdog SERAP wrote to Senate President Godswill Akpabio and House Speaker Tajudeen Abbas, demanding explanations over a missing ₦18.6 billion earmarked for the National Assembly Commission Office Complex.

Meanwhile, inflation continues to choke households. A new NielsenIQ report paints the picture clearly: six in ten Nigerians have abandoned their favourite brands for cheaper alternatives. The report concludes bluntly that the current administration “has not favoured most Nigerian families.”

And then came ASUU — again. On September 28, the university lecturers’ union gave the Federal Government a 14-day ultimatum, threatening a two-week warning strike to be followed by an indefinite one. Their demands were familiar: unpaid arrears, revitalisation funds, and the long-ignored 2009 agreement.

Each of these stories, taken alone, might seem routine in today’s Nigeria. Together, they form a pattern of a steady erosion of trust and citizens questioning whether democracy is still working for them.

The Lure of the Barracks

That’s why the October coup rumour hit such a nerve. It revealed a dangerous nostalgia creeping into public discourse, especially among the young.

Scroll through Facebook or X (formerly Twitter) on a bad economic day, and you’ll see the refrain: “At least under the soldiers, things worked.” “They should come and deal with these politicians.”

It’s a sentiment born not of experience but of exasperation. Most of those calling for the military never lived under it. They never saw soldiers drag people from their homes. They never queued for basic items under decrees or whispered in fear during curfews. They have never known what it means to live 72 hours without press freedom or the internet.

They are angry, and rightly so — at hunger, unemployment, corruption, and insecurity. But anger can be a dangerous historian. It forgets too easily and hopes too foolishly.

Those who survived the coups remember the silence, not the peace of stability but the silence of fear. They remember how newspapers vanished, how protests were crushed, how even laughter in public felt risky.

Every coup in Nigeria began with applause and ended in regret. Every general promised discipline and reform; every regime left the country poorer, more divided, and less free.

Why the Whispers Never Die

Coup rumours, in a democracy, are like fevers in the body politic. They signal that something deeper is wrong.

People don’t dream of soldiers unless they feel abandoned by those in power. Nostalgia grows when wages stagnate, when the lights go out, when elected leaders seem deaf to suffering.

The military is never the real threat to democracy. Bad governance is.

Every time a government fails to deliver, it invites the ghosts of the past to knock on the barracks door.

The true antidote to coup rumours is not censorship or arrests. It is competence.

When leaders are transparent, when corruption is punished, when citizens see results — the allure of the barracks fades. Democracy earns its legitimacy not through slogans or national parades but through performance.

Good governance doesn’t require perfection, just sincerity and accountability. Nigerians do not demand miracles; they demand fairness.

The October 2025 episode should not be dismissed as idle gossip. It is a warning flare. It is proof that public patience is thinning and trust is evaporating.

If history teaches anything, it is that no nation drifts into a coup by accident. Coups are born when hope dies. They are born when people decide that anything, even dictatorship, is better than disappointment.

Nigeria cannot afford that delusion again.

So let this “coup that never was” serve its purpose, not as prophecy, but as a mirror. A reflection of a state that must govern better or risk losing the confidence that keeps democracy alive.

Because the real coup is not the one plotted in secret by soldiers.
It is the slow, public betrayal of citizens by the leaders they elected.