LIBREVILLE: Pressure mounted on coup leaders in Gabon to hand back power to a civilian government on Friday, two days after they overthrew President Ali Bongo and announced their own head of state.

Military officers seized power on Wednesday, minutes after an announcement that Bongo had secured a third term in an election.

The officers placed Bongo under house arrest and installed General Brice Oligui Nguema as transitional leader. The takeover ended the Bongo family’s 56-year hold on power.

The coup — West and Central Africa’s eighth in three years - drew cheering crowds onto the streets of the capital, Libreville, but condemnation from abroad and at home.

Central African regional bloc ECCAS urged partners led by the United Nations and the African Union to support a rapid return to constitutional order, it said in a statement dated Aug 31 after an extraordinary meeting. It said it would reconvene on Monday.

Gabon’s main opposition group, Alternance 2023, which says it is the rightful winner of Saturday’s election, urged the international community on Friday to encourage the junta to hand power back to civilians.

“We were happy that Ali Bongo was overthrown but ... we hope that the international community will stand up in favour of the Republic and the democratic order in Gabon by asking the military to give back the power to the civilians,” Alexandra Pangha, spokesperson for Alternance 2023 leader Albert Ondo Ossa, told the BBC.

She said that the junta’s plan to inaugurate Nguema as head of state on Monday was “absurd”.

Crackdown on Bongo entourage

Bongo was elected in 2009, taking over from his late father who came to power in 1967. Opponents say the family did little to share Gabon’s oil and mining wealth.

For years the Bongo family occupied a luxurious palace overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. They own expensive cars and properties in France and the United States, often paid for in cash, according to a 2020 investigation by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), a global network of investigative journalists.

Published in Dawn, September 2nd, 2023