Gabon: The General’s Revenge

“Oligui, the president! Oligui, the president!” A group of soldiers carry General Brice Oligoi Nguema, who has just been appointed head of transition and institutional restoration after the military coup in Gabon that took place this week.

This athletic, shaven-headed man, as reserved as he is reticent, did not appear in the first three communications that other rebel officers were allowed to read on Gabon’s state television.

General Brice Oligwe Nguema, 48, is an unlikely leader, as is the speed with which the Bongo dynasty collapsed this week. “He disappeared, and everyone almost forgot about him,” confirms Edwige Sorgo Debany, a political analyst and specialist in African affairs. We did not expect him to lead Gabon one day. In the 2000s, he was away from the country for a long period. »

For exactly ten years, almost ten years he spent in exile after being removed from the inner circle of power. He was attached to the embassy in Morocco, then in Senegal, that is, on the sidelines. Upon his return in 2018, he assumed responsibility for the Republican Guard intelligence service, strengthening its powers and modernizing its practices.

Ali Bongo’s cousin

Gabon’s new strongman was born in Haute-Ogwe province, the Bongo family’s stronghold. He himself will be the cousin of Ali Bongo, the ousted president. A real man of the inner circle. At a very young age, he joined the powerful unit of Gabon’s Republican Guard, having trained at the Moroccan Military Academy. He was even an aide to President Omar Bongo for a time. He was known as a Francophile, and was very close to the former head of state whom he accompanied from 2005 to 2009, the year in which he was forcibly exiled when his son Ali Bongo came to power.

He is described as an ambitious young officer, and one of the shadow men of the Bongo clan, controlling the Imperial Guard to ensure the security of the clan, and he was ultimately the one who brought down Ali Bongo: revenge was cast upon the person who killed him. Outside. General Brice Oligwe Nguema will be inaugurated tomorrow as head of the “transitional” authority for a period yet to be determined.