By Enyichukwu Enemanna
Brice Oligui Nguema, who led Gabon’s August 2023 coup, on Sunday emerged winner of Saturday’s presidential election with 90.35% of the votes cast, the Central African country’s interior minister said, citing provisional results.
The victory extends Nguema’s grip on power 19 months after he declared himself transitional leader following the coup that ended over half a century of rule by the Bongo family in the oil-producing African nation with a population of about 2.5 million.
Nguema’s main challenger in the election, which featured eight candidates, Alain Claude Bilie By Nze, who was serving as prime minister under President Ali Bongo at the time of the coup, came a distant second with 3.02%, according to provisional results.
Campaigning with the slogan “We Build Together,” Nguema positioned himself as a change agent cracking down on the corrupt old guard. He vowed to diversify the economy away from oil and promote agriculture, industry, and tourism in a country where a third of the population lives in poverty.
According to the interior ministry, voter turnout was 70.40%, significantly higher than the 56.65% recorded in the August 2023 election that preceded the coup. In that contest, Bongo was named the winner for what would have been his third term, but the opposition denounced the process as fraudulent.
The Nguema-led coup unfolded shortly after the results were announced.
Under a constitution approved last November, Nguema’s election win grants him a seven-year term, renewable once.
Though he has promised a break from the Bongo era, when elites were accused of funding expensive lifestyles with Gabon’s oil wealth—Nguema himself has ties to the former government. He is a former aide-de-camp to Ali Bongo’s father, Omar Bongo, who served as president for more than 40 years until his death in 2009.
