Head of the all-powerful Republican Guard, Brice Oligui Nguema was named Wednesday “transition president” by the coup leaders, in a statement broadcast by Gabon 24 television. He replaces Ali Bongo, who had just been re-elected for a third term in a disputed elections and was promptly ousted from power. The duration of the transition of the military to power was not specified.
First modification:
3 min
His name has been on everyone’s lips since the beginning of the attempted coup in Gabon. On Wednesday, August 30, Brice Oligui Nguema, Commander-in-Chief of the Republican Guard, became the country’s new strongman after the military staged a putschdeclaring that they put an end to the regime.
General Oligui Nguema Brice was unanimously appointed president of the Committee for the Transition and Restoration of Institutions, president of the Transition,” declared an officer in the presence of dozens of superiors and generals representing all branches of the Gabonese Army, according to the release.
The duration of the transition of the military to power was not specified.
Meeting within the Committee for the Transition and Restoration of Institutions (CTRI), the coup military had previously decided to “defend peace by putting an end to the current regime,” according to a regular Army colonel.
At that time it was not known if Brice Oligui Nguema was really the leader of the coup plotters. At the reading of the communiqué, all the Army corps were represented: the Republican Guard, the regular Army, the Police, etc. However, Gabonese television regularly broadcast the same images: a man in fatigues and a green beret being held up by soldiers chanting “Oligui presidente”, suggesting that he was Brice Oligui Nguema, chief of the Republican Guard, Ali Bongo’s Praetorian Guard.
However, the first communiqué had been read in the courtyard of the presidential palace itself, a fortress protected by the same Republican Guard that he directs.
It was also he who answered to the questions of ‘Le Monde’ in the hours following the announcement of the seizure of power. Brice Oligui Nguema then declared that he had not been appointed to lead Gabon, but that the generals would meet in the afternoon to designate “the person who will lead the transition” at the head of the CTRI.
Ali Bongo was “retired (and) enjoys all his rights,” he also said. “He did not have the right to a third term, the Constitution was breached and the election method itself was not good. So the Army has decided to turn the page, assume its responsibilities”, Brice Oligui Nguema told ‘Le Monde’, stressing ” discontent” in the country and “the disease of the head of state”, weakened since a stroke in 2018.
The disagreement with Ali Bongo at the beginning of his term
Before the coup attempt, General Brice Oligui Nguema was already a powerful man. Trained at the Royal Military Academy of Meknes (Morocco) and the son of an officer, he quickly rose through the military ranks to become one of the aides-de-camp of Omar Bongo, president of his country from 1967 until his death in 2009.
“When I met him, he was quite an intelligent man, easy to talk to and not afraid of the journalists of the time,” says Francis Kpatindé, a journalist and professor at Sciences-Po Paris, specializing in Gabon.
Since 2021, he has led the Republican Guard, the soldiers tasked with protecting Ali Bongo.
“At first he had problems with Ali Bongo, who exiled him to the Gabonese embassy in Morocco and then to Senegal,” recalls Kpatindé, however.
He returned from abroad after Ali Bongo’s October 2018 stroke in Saudi Arabia. He thus resumed his career, rising through the ranks to his current position.
Although Ali Bongo’s first cousin has not been named in the so-called “ill-gotten gains” affair, unlike many of Omar Bongo’s children, Brice Oligui is not free from suspicions of personal enrichment. According to the US anti-corruption organization OCCRP (Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project)between 2015 and 2018 bought three properties in the suburbs of Washington, in the United States, for a total of more than a million dollars.
According to the ‘Mondafrique’r media, Ali Bongo had asked him to help his son Noureddin Bongo Valentin prepare for the perpetuation of the dynasty. He decided otherwise.
This article was adapted from its original in French.
#Brice #Oligui #Nguema #Republican #Guard #put #Ali #Bongo #retirement