Details unfold as Sahel regional union issues threat after Nigerian military plane’s emergency landing
By OUR REPORTERS
Although his mission to attack Niger stopped due to stiff opposition from Northern Nigeria, Tinubu championed several ECOWAS sanctions mainly cutting of electricity supply to the Sahel region and essentially that no plane from any of Nigeria, Mali and Burkina Faso should fly into, through or over the airspace of Nigeria. Military governments of the three Sahel regional countries thus retaliated by also issuing a reply to the ECOWAS sanctions championed by Nigeria.
The decision by Nigerian President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to drag the world’s largest black country he rules into long provoked crisis with Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger through involvement in the Republic of Benin political impasse may have further escalated.
This is as military administrations in the three West African states warned that they would shoot down any aircraft that violated their airspace, after a Nigerian military plane carrying 11 soldiers of the Nigerian Armed Forces made an unauthorised landing in Burkina Faso, which Abuja, in providing excuse for the action, called me agency landing.
The situation in the Sahel region remains tense as the military administrations in the implicated countries are on high alert and prepared to enforce their airspace sovereignty.
The involvement of Nigeria in the political crises in the region has sparked tensions and raised concerns about the escalation of conflicts. The repercussions of President Tinubu’s actions in the region are yet to fully unfold, but they have already triggered a warning from the Sahel regional union.
The international community is closely monitoring the developments in the Sahel region and the implications of Nigeria’s involvement in the conflicts.
Watchers of events as they unfold among the West African states – now effectively divided into two: Economic Community of West Africa States (ECOWAS) and Alliance of Sahel States (AES) – are of the opinion that it should not have been Nigeria, which not just any aircraft but military fighter her would make an unauthorised landing of any type on territory of any of the three countries it championed yet to be vacated no-flight-zone against.
It would be recalled that when Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso chose military approach to reorganise their political administrations dilapidated by the undemocratic democrats ruling them as puppets of France to the detriment of their own black people, Nigerian President Bola Tinubu, as newly emerged Chairman of ECOWAS and working on widely report yet undebunked instructions of France and United States of America, led the sub-regional block to launch military action in Republic of Niger.
Although his mission to attack Niger stopped due to stiff opposition from Northern Nigeria, Tinubu championed several ECOWAS sanctions mainly cutting of electricity supply to the Sahel region and essentially that no plane from any of Nigeria, Mali and Burkina Faso should fly into, through or over the airspace of Nigeria.
Military governments of the three Sahel regional countries thus retaliated by also issuing a reply to the ECOWAS sanctions championed by Nigeria which still stand until, 48 hours after his France-induced involvement in the political impasse in Republic of Benin, President Tinubu’s military jet made an unauthorised encroachment into the airspace of one of the AES member country, Burkina Faso and it was forced to land.
Although from the Nigerian end the forced landing was described as emergency landing, not many of the international affairs analysts who have spoken about the latest development since it happened on Monday December 8, 2025 agreed that it was emergency landing.
Some of them insinuated, since he had always been willing to carryout Western powers especially France’s wishes of launching military operations in Niger but failed until he got away with it in Benin, that the presence of the Nigerian fighter jet in the airspace of Burkina Faso was to prove a point that “If we can do it in Benin, President Ibrahim Traore should begin to watch his back,” according to the analyst from Tanzania, who chose to speak under strict condition of anonymity for security reasons.
Lauretta Onochie, an opposition coalition’s African Democratic Congress (ADC)’s chieftain in Nigeria had reportedly raised the alarm describing Tinubu’s dragging of Nigeria into the Republic of Benin crisis as “Trouble Dey Sleep…”.
She was worried because, while Nigerians are being killed by criminal elements and US President Donald Trump is help Tinubu to divide his people along religious line, President Tinubu focused on mainly making the country he rules a French colony President Emmanuel Macron she described as having no more than “3% approval rating” in his own France.
After the Benin military adventure of Tinubu, which he gladly did, one of the military aircrafts deployed for the mission, carrying 11 military personnel landed in Ouagadougou without authorisation, the economic union of Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger — known as Alliance of Sahel States — said in a statement late Monday.
“Our air and anti-aircraft defenses are authorized to neutralize any aircraft that violates our airspace,” according to the statement that was signed by Malian military leader General Assimi Goita.
The Nigerian Air Force separately said the plane was on a “ferry mission” to Portugal, but developed a technical issue after take-off that required it to land at the nearest airport, which was in Burkina Faso. It said the crew was safe and were receiving “cordial treatment” from the local authorities.
The incident comes a day after Nigerian soldiers and fighter jets intervened in neighboring Benin to help thwart an attempted coup, halting the mutiny hours after a group of soldiers appeared on television to declare they had seized control of the country.
Had it succeeded, the takeover would have been the 10th putsch in the region since 2020, adding to a wave of military power grabs stretching from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea.
