“Oligui, President! Oligui, President! » A group of soldiers carry in triumph General Brice Oligui Nguema, who has just been appointed president of the Transitional and Restoration Organization following the military coup in Gabon that took place this week.
This discreet and mysterious man, with an athletic build and a shaved head, did not appear in the first three communiqués he read to other mutinous officers on Gabon state television. 24.
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General Brice Oligui Nguema, 48, is an unexpected leader, as is the speed with which the Bongo dynasty collapsed this week. “He had disappeared, he was almost forgotten by everyone,” assures Edwige Sorgho Depagne, political analyst and Africa specialist. We did not expect that one day he would lead Gabon. He was out of the country for so long in the 2000s. »
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For exactly ten years, he spent almost ten years in exile after being removed from the inner circle of power. He was an embassy attaché in Morocco, then in Senegal, so he was on the sidelines. Upon his return in 2018, he took charge of the Republican Guard’s intelligence agency, strengthening its powers and modernizing its practices.
A cousin of Ali Bongo
Gabon’s new strongman was born in the Haut-Ogooué province, a region that is the stronghold of the Bongo family. He himself would be the cousin of Ali Bongo, the deposed president. A true inner circle man. He joined Gabon’s powerful Republican Guard unit at a young age after training at the Moroccan Military Academy. For a time he was even an aide to President Omar Bongo. Known as a Francophile, he was very close to the former head of state, whom he accompanied from 2005 to 2009, the year of his forced exile when Ali Bongo, the son, came to power.
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Described as an ambitious young officer, one of the shadow men of the Bongo clan, whose Praetorian Guard he controls and ensures the clan’s safety, it was ultimately he who brought down Ali Bongo: revenge on the one who killed him and threw him out. General Brice Oligui Nguema will be enthroned tomorrow as president of a “transitional power” of an as-yet-undetermined duration.