‘Déjà coup’ in Gabon as another African government falls to military rule

Gabon’s president Ali Bongo looked disoriented as he stared into a camera and appealed for international help against the generals who had placed him under house arrest and carried out the latest coup in central and west Africa.

“I don’t know what’s going on,” Bongo (64), said on Wednesday, not long after he had been declared the winner of Saturday’s disputed election. His words could have been uttered by any of the regional leaders who have watched haplessly as coup after coup has removed them from office.

The military takeover in relatively wealthy Gabon, with a nominal per capita income of $8,800, comes hard on the heels of last month’s coup in much poorer Niger and follows seven other putsches in west and central Africa in just three years, all in former French colonies.

The coup highlighted the extent to which the region’s generals had become emboldened and outside participants powerless to influence events, according to Kholood Khair, director of the Confluence Advisory think-tank in Sudan, itself rocked by recent military takeovers.

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In Niger, condemnation by the African Union and the threat of invasion issued by the Economic Community of West African States had done nothing to stem the tide, she said, adding that soldiers were exploiting real dissatisfaction among the population.

“It’s almost impossible to undo a coup once it’s happened,” Khair said. “Former colonial powers like France, regional bodies like Ecowas or countries like Nigeria have been exposed as very weak in their efforts to push for anything to be undone.”

[ African leaders work on response to Gabon military coup ]

She added: “They’re becoming very predictable. It’s what I call déjà coup.”

The generals who seized power early on Wednesday went on Gabonese television to annul the election result, dissolve state institutions and assert that the oil-rich country was “finally on the road to happiness”.

As in Niger, the military takeover was initiated inside the presidential guard, this time by Gen Brice Oligui Nguema. But analysts said the latest events had more in common with the 2021 coup in Guinea.

Soldiers there seized power after Alpha Condé won a third term as president having rewritten the constitution. Like Condé, Bongo appears to have run out of popular support.

His father Omar Bongo ran Gabon from 1967 until his death in 2009, when Ali Bongo succeeded him. Both were accused of amassing huge personal wealth and running the country for their own financial benefit.

Crowds took to the streets of Libreville, the Gabonese capital, on Wednesday to celebrate the demise of what was in effect a 56-year family dynasty.

“There’s nothing worth anything in Gabon in which the Bongos don’t have an interest,” said Chidi Odinkalu, of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, adding that they were “were basically using Gabon as a family estate”.

Despite France’s condemnation of the coup, Bongo’s lack of popular support suggested there would be little appetite – internally or externally – to restore him to power, Odinkalu said.

Bongo, who plays jazz piano and released a moderately successful album in 1977, had sought to burnish his reputation by presenting Gabon as a responsible protector of its rainforests and a country with sustainable economic policies. Francophone Gabon joined the Commonwealth last year. Yet many in the country of 2.4 million people remain poor.

Bongo suggested on independence day this year that his country was immune from the threat of coups that were sweeping the region. “While our continent has been shaken in recent weeks by violent crises, rest assured I’ll never allow you and our country, Gabon, to be hostages to attempts at destabilisation. Never,” he said.

Wednesday’s coup came just hours after Gabon’s electoral commission had declared that Bongo won a third term with 64.27 per cent of the vote, a supposed improvement on last time when he had been declared the winner with just 49.8 per cent.

Alex Vines, head of the Africa Programme at Chatham House think-tank in London, said a lack of transparency in the electoral process undermined Bongo’s legitimacy. “If you declare a curfew, if you cut the internet, if you don’t invite international observers or the international press, that’s telling you something,” he said of the measures taken by the government around the vote.

“The frustration in Libreville at the domination of the Bongo dynasty was very palpable, especially among the young,” Vines said. “There was a desire for change and you can kind of see why a coup has happened.”

Nguema was later on Wednesday installed at the helm of Gabon’s new military regime. Video images taken in the capital Libreville purported to show soldiers holding him aloft and proclaiming him “president”.

Analysts said coups had gained legitimacy as the credibility of elections and democratic rule in much of Africa had declined, and leaders had learned to game political systems.

In Zimbabwe this month, Emmerson Mnangagwa became the latest in a string of supposedly democratic heads of state to win a contest dominated by intimidation and irregularities that appeared designed to guarantee victory for the incumbent.

“These guys are abducting countries,” said the Fletcher School’s Odinkalu. “What’s the difference between a military coup and a rigged election?” – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2023