The Man Who Came to Stay

Brice Oligui Nguema’s landslide win cements his transformation from coup-maker to civilian president, but Gabon’s democratic future remains caught in the amber of its autocratic past.

Gabon’s military ruler-turned-candidate, Brice Oligui Nguema, has claimed a thunderous electoral victory, securing 90.35 percent of the vote in the country’s first presidential election since he ousted longtime leader Ali Bongo Ondimba in a bloodless coup nearly two years ago.

The result announced by the Ministry of the Interior was less a surprise than a confirmation of the obvious: that Oligui, the former head of the Republican Guard and architect of the August 2023 coup, had effectively rewritten Gabon’s political script to cast himself as both savior and successor. His nearest challenger, Alain-Claude Bilie Bie Nze, a former Bongo-era prime minister, won a meagre 3.02 percent of the vote, while the remaining candidates barely scratched the 1 percent mark. However, despite appearances of a ‘satisfactory election,’ it is obvious that what the hustings lacked was genuine competition.

Oligui’s transition from uniformed strongman to civilian president is a pattern which is unfolding across West and Central Africa, where military leaders have discovered the utility of ballots - not to relinquish power, but to codify it. When he cast his vote at Libreville’s Centre Urban Pilot School on April 12, dressed in civilian clothes and flanked by loyalists, the image was carefully curated: a man of the people, delivering on his promise to restore constitutional rule. But the promise, it turns out, was mostly semantic. Oligui did return Gabon to constitutional governance. He simply rewrote the constitution in his own name.

To understand what has happened in Gabon is to confront a legacy of arrested democratic development. Since independence from France in 1960, the country has rarely seen power change hands outside of family lines.

Omar Bongo, the patriarch of the ruling dynasty, governed for over four decades with a blend of charm, oil largesse, and repression. His son, Ali Bongo, took over in 2009 and clung to office until his sudden fall in 2023, days after declaring victory in yet another disputed election. The military, under Oligui’s command, stepped in, citing the need to restore order and integrity. Many Gabonese cheered.

But cheers can fade quickly. While Oligui promised a new era of transparency and reform, he soon blurred the line between transition and permanence. His decision to run for president was made official just last month, after he secured a leave of absence from his military role and declared himself a civilian. It was a neat trick that offered the illusion of democratic procedure while preserving the status quo. According to the Gabonese Civil Society Organizations Observation Mission, Oligui had representatives in nearly 70 percent of polling stations while his main rival had just 8.2 percent.

The tepid international response reveals the geopolitics beneath the pageantry. Gabon is a resource-rich country with deep ties to France. Western diplomats, whilst uneasy with the optics of a military-backed election, seem disinclined to push too hard. Compared to the convulsions in Mali or Niger, Oligui’s Gabon appears stable, even governable. But stability is not the same as legitimacy.

With his seven-year term now formalized, Oligui faces a test that goes far beyond electioneering. A third of Gabon’s 2.3 million citizens live in poverty, despite oil revenues that should place the country among Africa’s most prosperous. Infrastructure is crumbling, education and health systems are threadbare, and endemic corruption still permeates public life. The Bongo dynasty may be gone, but the edifice it built remains. Oligui helped prop it up for years. Now, he claims to be its demolisher.

If he is serious about change, he must show the courage not only to govern but to transform Gabon’s elite institutions, open political space to dissent and begin redistributing the benefits of state wealth.

But if history is any guide, Gabon may simply be circling back to where it began: ruled by a strongman in civilian garb, promising democracy but delivering its illusion.