AU responds on Gabon coup as the opposition thanks military
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African Union (AU) suspended Gabon from the organization membership after the military coup that ousted President Ali Bongo
African Union (AU) suspended Gabon from the organization membership after the military coup that ousted President Ali Bongo.
The African Union (AU) on Thursday suspended Gabon’s membership one day after military officers ousted President Ali Bongo, the first regional response to the eighth coup in West and Central Africa since 2020.
The revolt puts an end to the Bongo family dynasty’s nearly six decades in power and throws the region into a new quandary. Nigerian President Bola Tinubu described the series of coups as a “contagion of autocracy.”
In spite of worldwide criticism, Gabon’s military commanders are attempting to consolidate power, similar to other juntas that have seized power in the region.
The coup leader and former commander of the presidential guard, General Brice Oligui Nguema, is scheduled to take the oath of office as president on Monday.
“My fear has been confirmed in Gabon that copycats will start doing the same thing until it is stopped,” Tinubu, who chairs West Africa’s main regional body ECOWAS, said on Thursday.
The AU’s Peace and Security Council made a first move on Thursday by barring Gabon’s participation in all its activities, organs, and institutions until constitutional order is restored.
Central Africa’s political bloc, of which Gabon is a member, also condemned the coup in a statement and said it planned an “imminent” meeting of heads of state to determine how to respond. It did not give a date.
Senior officers in Gabon announced their coup before dawn on Wednesday, shortly after an election body declared that Bongo had comfortably won a third term in Saturday’s vote.
The junta declared the vote null and void, dissolved state institutions, and closed borders.
Later on Wednesday, a video emerged of Bongo detained in his residence, asking international allies for help but apparently unaware of what was happening around him.
Gabon’s main opposition platform, Alternance 2023, thanked the junta on Thursday for ending the Bongos’ long grip on power.
But representative Mike Jocktane added that the coup leaders should finish what he said was an incomplete vote count. A full tally would show that the main opposition candidate, Albert Ondo Ossa, had won, he said.
In official results announced on Wednesday, Ondo Ossa came a distant second to Bongo.
Jocktane said the opposition was willing to hold talks with the junta “to avoid a future for our country even darker than the one we have been spared”.
In a statement on Thursday, the junta said it had resumed domestic flights and restored some state institutions, including the Constitutional Court.
But land and air borders remain shut.
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The events in Gabon follow recent coups in Mali, Guinea, Burkina Faso, Chad, and Niger, erasing democratic gains since the 1990s and raising concerns among foreign powers with regional strategic interests. The coups also showed the limited leverage of African powers once the military took over.
ECOWAS threatened military intervention in Niger after a coup there on July 26 and imposed sanctions, but the junta has not backed down.
Military leaders elsewhere have also resisted international pressure to restore civilian rule. They have managed to hold on to power and some have even gained popular support.
Bongo’s popularity had worn thin amid claims of corruption, sham elections, and a failure to spend more of Gabon’s oil and mineral wealth on the country’s poor. He took over in 2009 on the death of his father, Omar, who had ruled since 1967.
France, the United States, Canada, and Britain have all expressed concern about the coup. But they have not made direct calls for reinstating Bongo.
The European Union’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, said the election had been full of irregularities, adding that the EU rejected the seizure of power by force.
A lack of international observers, the suspension of some foreign broadcasts, and the authorities’ decision to cut internet service and impose a night curfew after the election raised concerns about the transparency of the vote.
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