Benin: Janvier Yahouédéou discusses the reasons for his break with Boni Yayi
The coordinating minister of President Patrice Talon’s advisory council, Janvier Yahouédéou, explained, on Saturday August 9, 2025 on the set of the show Info Hebdo (Esae TV), the origins of his political break with former head of state Boni Yayi. A gradual distancing, initiated as early as 2008, and motivated, according to him, by serious suspicions of mismanagement.
Originally a member of the presidential movement, Yahouédéou asserts that his doubts took shape after a congress in Bohicon, when the deputy Issa Salifou publicly declared that the funds from the used vehicles affair were not budgeted and that the president had safes “in his car, his house, and his office”.
“That day, I said I would do my investigations, and if what I hear is true, I’m leaving Yayi,” he recalls.
The deputy minister explains that he funded investigations from his own resources, which took him abroad. He claims to have obtained official documents proving, for example, that tractors purchased for a little over a million CFA francs were declared for ten to twelve million, and broke down in less than three months.
These discoveries would have fueled his belief that practices of overbilling and embezzlement were tarnishing the country’s management.
Today, he compares the governance of Yayi and Talon, believing that some players from the old regime are collaborating with the current president, but they “can no longer steal”. What differentiates the two regimes, he insists, is that under Talon, “they can no longer steal”. According to him, if Patrice Talon decided to wage a total war against corruption, Boni Yayi “would find himself in prison”.
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