Mutinous soldiers in Gabon said Wednesday they were seizing power to overturn the results of a presidential election, and claimed to have arrested the president, whose family has held power for 55 years.
The coup attempt came hours after the central African country’s President Ali Bongo Ondimba, 64, was declared winner of an election marred by fears of violence.
The soldiers intended to “dissolve all institutions of the republic,” said a spokesman for the group, whose members were drawn from the gendarme, the republican guard and other elements of the security forces. Later in the day, a second video carried on state television said the president and other people in the government have been arrested on various charges.
The coup attempt came about one month after mutinous soldiers in Niger seized power from the democratically elected government, and is the latest in a series of coups that have challenged governments with ties to France, the region’s former colonizer. Gabon’s coup, if successful would bring the number of coups in West and Central Africa to eight since 2020.
Gabon is a member of the OPEC oil cartel, with a production of some 181,000 barrels of crude a day, making it the eighth-largest producer of oil in sub-Saharan Africa. It is home to over 2 million people, and is slightly smaller than the U.S. state of Colorado. The mutinous officers vowed to respect “Gabon’s commitments to the national and international community.”
Several members of the Bongo family are under investigation in France, and some have been given preliminary charges of embezzlement, money laundering and other forms of corruption, according to French media reports, driven in part by a broader push for justice by non-governmental organizations that have long accused multiple African heads of state of embezzling public funds and hiding them in France.
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