2023-08-31 00:32:25
The putschist soldiers who “put an end to the regime in place” in Gabon on August 30, 2023, by dismissing outgoing President Ali Bongo Ondimba, placed at their head the head of the Republican Guard, General Brice Oligui Nguema. A high-ranking officer who has been in the inner circle of power for a long time. Presentation.
General Oligui Nguema took charge of Gabon on August 30, 2023. He is a high-ranking officer who has been in the inner circle of power for a long time.
Son of an officer, Brice Clotaire Oligui Nguema was trained in Morocco, a country very close to Gabon, before standing out and becoming aide-de-camp to Omar Bongo, president of Gabon from 1967 to 2009. Brice Clotaire Oligui Nguema remained until the death of the president in June 2009. Ali Bongo then succeeded his father but the officer’s career took a turn. He was sent abroad, as military attaché at the Gabonese embassy in Morocco and then in Senegal. An estrangement that Brice Clotaire Oligui Nguema would have experienced badly, felt like a forced exile, good sources indicate.
“We know that, when Ali Bongo was elected, there were conflicts between him and General Oligui,” underlines Florence Bernault, professor and researcher at the Sciences Po History Center, historian and specialist in Central Africa. So he was appointed to various diplomatic posts for a little while starting in 2009.”
Bergès Mietté, researcher at the Africas in the World laboratory, affirms, for his part: “After Ali Bongo came to power, Brice Oligui Nguema was accused of having taken part in a plotted coup attempt. by General Ntumpa [en 2009, Ndlr]. But except that his responsibility in this coup had not been established during the trial held in Libreville. It was at that time that he was dismissed from his position, more or less, and that he was sent to the Gabonese embassy in Senegal, as military attaché. »
Recalled to Libreville after Ali Bongo’s stroke
Ten years later, after Ali Bongo’s stroke, Brice Clotaire Oligui Nguema, then colonel, returned to the country and to the forefront. He replaces Frédéric Bongo, half-brother of the president, at the head of intelligence for the Republican Guard and its green berets.
In 2020, we discovered that the military did not lack resources: an investigation by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, a group of investigators, revealed that Brice Clotaire Oligui Nguema owns several properties in the United States, of total value of one million dollars. In 2018, for example, he allegedly paid $447,000 in cash to buy a property in the city of Silver Spring.
Six months after his return from abroad, he had taken command of the Republican Guard where he had reinforced the protective device around the head of state. His mission was to lead Ali Bongo’s praetorian guard and watch over him. He finally decided to bring it down.
To the newspaper Le Monde, he justified a little earlier this Wednesday: “You know that in Gabon there is discontent and, beyond this discontent, there is the illness of the head of state. Everyone talks about it, but no one takes responsibility. He did not have the right to serve a third term, the Constitution was violated, the method of election itself was not good. So the army decided to turn the page, to take its responsibilities. »
With RFI
#General #Brice #Oligui #Nguema #appointed #president #Transition #putschists #Aminata.com #Information #Guinea #world