A few hours after overthrowing Ali Bongo Ondimba, whose family had ruled Gabon for 55 years, the country's military appointed one of their own to head the transition, on Wednesday, August 30. "General Oligui Nguema Brice has been unanimously appointed president of the Committee for the Transition and Restoration of Institutions [CTRI], president of the transition," a soldier told television channel Gabon 24, appearing on screen with dozens of senior officers and generals in the background, and reading a statement.

Earlier in the day, Oligui Nguema had been carried in triumph by his men, emerging as the country's new strongman. Renowned for his popularity with the troops and his measured choices, the man who was the last aide-de-camp to Omar Bongo Ondimba, the father of the deposed president, was commander-in-chief of the Republican Guard, a unit whose primary mission is to ensure the "security and protection" of the president. Oligui Nguema had pampered the team, recruiting several hundred men since taking office in 2020 and obtaining better equipment.

Earlier on Wednesday, Oligui Nguema told Le Monde Bongo had been "retired." "He is a Gabonese head of state. He is retired and enjoys all his rights. He is a normal Gabonese, like everyone else," he said of his distant cousin, adding the army had "decided to turn the page and take its responsibilities" in the face of what he described as mounting anger in the country, Bongo's "illness" (he suffered a stroke in October 2018 that left him weakened) and a poorly organized presidential election.

The announcement early on Wednesday morning of the results of the presidential election held on Saturday triggered the coup, which could become the first to prove successful in the country's history. Less than an hour after the head of an election body proclaimed the incumbent president's re-election with 64.27% of the vote, 11 soldiers appeared on the set of Gabon 24 to declare "the dissolution of all institutions" and "the end of the regime."

The staging of their appearance ticked all the boxes of the coups that have spread across Africa over the past three years, with the largest possible gathering of the country's defense and security forces on television to project an impression of unity, the closure of borders "until further notice" and an appeal to the population for "calm and serenity."

Unlike the putsches in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger, the justification could not be security-related, in an oil and mineral-rich country that has never experienced war. The soldiers did, however, have a powerful argument up their sleeves to justify their action: the general elections, whose results were "truncated" and "nullified," according to the CTRI's first statement.

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