Several reactions have trailed the military coup in Gabon days after the Gabonese President, Ali Bongo, won the presidential election.
Naija News reported that soldiers were said to have appeared on Gabonese national television in Gabon to announce that they had taken power.
The military also announced the annulment of Saturday’s election and the dissolution of the democratic institutions in the country.
Speaking on Gabon 1 and Gabon 24, the military spokesman said he spoke on behalf of the “Committee for the Transition and Restoration of Institutions”.
Below are ten things you probably didn’t know about Ali Bongo.
1. Ali Bongo was born ‘Alain Bernard Bongo’ in neighbouring Congo-Brazzaville in February 1959.
2. His father, Omar Bongo, was president of Gabon from 1967 until he died in 2009.
3. He was Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1989 to 1991 during his father’s presidency.
4. Ali Bongo won the 2009 Gabonese presidential election after his father’s death.
5. He was reelected in 2016 in elections marred by numerous irregularities, arrests, human rights violations and post-election protests and violence.
6. He studied at a private school in Neuilly, France, and then studied law at the Sorbonne.
7. In 1977, he released a funk album, ‘A Brand New Man’, produced by Charles Bobbit.
8. In 1989, Ali Bongo married his first wife, a French-born, Sylvia Valentin.
9. In 1994, Ali Bongo married his second American wife, Inge Lynn Collins Bongo, from Los Angeles, California. At the time of Ali Bongo’s election as president, Inge Bongo was living on food stamps in California, and she later filed for divorce in 2015.
10. Ali Bongo has four children.
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