Guinea-Bissau is in an all-too-familiar state of flux in the wake of an apparent coup d’état that unfolded just as results from the November election were due to be announced – with both the incumbent and his main challenger declaring premature victory.

On November 26, the day the results were due to be announced, President Umaro Sissoco Embaló publicly stated that he had been “removed” in a military takeover. Hours later, a faction of the armed forces declared that they had seized power to “prevent destabilisation” allegedly being orchestrated by unnamed politicians.

Gunfire was heard near major government buildings. But no casualties were reported.

The next day, General Horta N’Tam was presented as a transitional leader by the military officers, calling themselves the “High Military Command for the Restoration of National Security and Public Order”. On November 28, the junta appointed a new prime minister, Ilídio Vieira Té — a close ally of the deposed president — signifying the first step in forming a transitional government under military rule.

On December 2, the National Electoral Commission of Guinea-Bissau (CNE) announced it could not complete the presidential election because tally sheets had been seized, computers confiscated, and servers destroyed.

On the one hand, this is nothing new for the West African country, which has experienced multiple attempted and successful coups since gaining independence from Portugal a half century ago – with military takeovers in 1980, 1998–99, 2003 and 2012, and foiled plots in 2022 and 2023.

But this apparent coup was unique, with the declaration of a military takeover coming first from the head of state himself rather than the soldiers.

Nigerian former president Goodluck Jonathan, who was in Bissau on an election observation mission at the time, suggested that it may have been staged. He questioned why Embaló was the first to announce his own removal, calling the sequence of events highly irregular. Senegalese Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko said much the same.

Several civil-society organisations inside Guinea-Bissau have also echoed that view, accusing the deposed president of engineering the incident to halt the release of unfavourable election results, and waiting in the wings to return. They pointed to previous attempts to marginalise political rivals, including the dissolution of parliament in December 2023.

Beverly Ochieng, a senior analyst in Control Risks' Global Risk Analysis who has long monitored Guinea-Bissau, said the credibility of this particular coup is in doubt because it was orchestrated by military officers perceived to be Embaló’s allies.

"Some believe that the coup was staged to prevent Embaló from losing the election. It enables the military to consolidate power. So, it is not unlikely that Embaló will return as the head of this junta or run for office at the end of the transition," she told Anadolu Agency.

Embaló, a Fulani former general and leader of Madem-G15, came to power in a disputed 2019 election and was only formally recognised after pressure from Ecowas. But a few years later, he dissolved parliament and governed in a grey constitutional zone, overstaying his mandate while gearing up for re-election.

The armed forces claimed last week that they had intervened solely to prevent an alleged destabilisation plot involving unnamed politicians with the support of a “well-known drug baron”. The officers stated that the state intelligence service had discovered the plan, and plotters had amassed a cache of weapons.

Such allegations are difficult if not impossible to verify and have fuelled further doubts in Guinea-Bissau – long known as a “narco-state” – that they had witnessed not a coup but some well-orchestrated political theatre. Meanwhile, regional actors, including the bloc Ecowas, have called for restraint and clarity from the authorities, and a quick return to the constitutional order.

It is still a matter of debate whether the 2022 and 2023 “attempted coups” were genuine insurrections or manufactured crises that Embaló used to consolidate power. Percept the current coup was a variation on that playbook – or has he been truly sidelined?

The officer corps may have reckoned that Embaló was plotting a post-election push for one-man rule or that if his challenger Dias were elected, their positions in the high command would be in jeopardy, or that he would push to prosecute human rights abuses at the hands of the military.

It could also be that the Guinea-Bissau officer corps was inspired by successful coups in Mali (2021), Burkina Faso (2022), and Niger (2023) – which have banded together in the face of Ecowas sanctions, to form their own bloc -- a bloc increasingly aligned with Russia, to which it offers mineral rights in exchange for military equipment and technical know-how. But Moscow has not publicly welcomed the coup in Guinea-Bissau, whereas it was quick to do so in the Sahel states.

Freddie David Egesa, a security analyst based in Uganda, attributed Embaló’s overthrow to a well-entrenched “deep state”, secretive power structures that pull the strings behind the scenes, which the president lost control of.

“Most of the presidents who are now very difficult to topple are those who have built their own armies from infancy; they have raised them, they have not inherited them," Egesa told Anadolu Agency.

“Somehow, you are a servant of the person who has the military might because it is far different from the state, far different from the government. Once you have mastered the military might, then you have the right, powers, and ability to drive the government the way you want. But in case they (military) get suspicious about you, then they can literally kick you out.”

Guinea-Bissau is one of the least developed countries in the world, and its economy is poorly diversified. While the vital cashew nut crop provides a modest living for most farmers, and is the main source of foreign exchange, the real moneymaker for a cadre of corrupt elites in the coastal nation of 2mn people is cocaine-trafficking. High-ranking political figures, military officials and business leaders all have been implicated in the trade.

Another theory circulating is that Latin American drug cartels, and not their local partners, orchestrated the takeover. Their aim, the theory goes, is to keep Guinea-Bissau a dysfunctional (but not “failed”) state, run by a military-dominated transitional council with whom they can do business.