Yaounde, Apr. 13, (dpa/GNA) – General Brice Oligui Nguema was on Sunday declared provisional winner of Gabon’s first presidential election since he led a military coup over a year and a half ago.
The military officer defeated seven other candidates, scoring a landslide 90.35% of the vote, according to the country’s interior minister, Herrmann Immongault.
The results indicate that 70.4% of the registered 920,200 voters took part in the election.
National and international observers deployed to the 2,920 voting booths said the vote was largely peaceful.
The election puts an end to the 19-month transitional rule of Nguema, who came to power in 2023 following a bloodless coup against his cousin, president Ali Bongo Ondimba.
The military junta, through a referendum, changed the constitution to enable Nguema to seek a formal mandate. The country’s new constitution provides for a presidential term of seven years, which can be extended once.
Nguema’s connections to the former regime have drawn criticism.
The Bongo family, which had ruled the former French colony in Central Africa since 1967, has been accused of massive corruption.
Many of the approximately 2.5 million Gabonese people, who live largely in poverty despite the country’s wealth of natural resources, celebrated the coup as a liberation from kleptocracy.
Since 2020, Africa has experienced nine unconstitutional military takeovers, almost all of them in former French colonies in West and Central Africa.
In Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and Guinea, military councils with transitional governments have been in power since then, and no elections have yet been scheduled.
GNA
PDC