“President Ali Bongo is under house arrest, surrounded by his family and doctors,” they said in a statement read out on state TV.
A group of senior Gabonese military officers appeared on national television in the early hours of Wednesday and said they had taken power, minutes after the state election body announced President Ali Bongo had won a third term.
Appearing on television channel Gabon 24, the officers said they represented all security and defense forces in the Central African nation. They said the election results were canceled, all borders closed until further notice and state institutions dissolved.
Loud sounds of gunfire could be heard in the capital Libreville, a Reuters reporter said, after the television appearance.A dozen mutinous soldiers appeared on Gabonese national television, announcing the cancellation of recent election results and the dissolution of “all the institutions of the republic”.
Wednesday’s announcement came after President Ali Bongo Ondimba, 64 was re-elected for a third term, in an election the opposition described as a ‘fraud orchestrated’ by the ruling party.
The soldiers say they have the president under house arrest in a location believed to be the presidential palace.
He is the son of Omar Bongo who was president from 1967 till his death in 2009. The younger Bongo has been in power since then.
There have been scenes of celebration in the Gabonese capital, Libreville since the military takeover.
“Moscow has received with concern reports of a sharp deterioration in the internal situation in the friendly African country. We continue to closely monitor the development of the situation and hope for its speedy stabilisation,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told reporters on Wednesday.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Moscow was closely following the situation.
Russia is looking to build up diplomatic and trade ties with Africa, and President Vladimir Putin hosted African leaders for a summit last month.
Speaking to Al Jazeera from Dusseldorf, Germany, political analyst Adama Gaye says the ongoing coup in Gabon did not come as a surprise.
“The Bongo era is over. Ali Bongo was no longer in the hearts of the population in Gabon. He was not accepted by the opposition, who were very strong this time around,” Gaye said.
“There was also bickering between Ali Bongo and France to the point where two days ago on national television a speaker said there was a coup attempt been masterminded by Emmanuel Macron and the opposition,” he added.
“He [Bongo] was trying to create the condition for him to clamp down on the opposition and to fabricate another victory for himself in another rigged election. But this time around, the military realised that this was too far-fetched and they had to act, and that is what they did,” Gaye added.
French government spokesman Olivier Veran says Paris condemns the coup in Gabon and wants the election result to be respected.
Earlier, Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne said France is following events in Gabon “with the greatest attention”.
On Monday, President Emmanuel Macron denounced what he called an “epidemic” of coups in recent years in French-speaking Africa, from Mali and Burkina Faso to Guinea and most recently Niger.
Paris maintains a military presence in many of its former colonial territories, including Gabon, where it has 370 soldiers permanently deployed, some in the capital, Libreville, according to the French Ministry of the Armed Forces website.
A military vehicle passes by people celebrating in Gabon after military officers announced they had taken power[Reuters]
The French oil giant TotalEnergies says it has made arrangements to ensure the safety of its employees and operations in Gabon.
The company is the country’s main distributor of petroleum products with 45 petrol stations and 350 staff.
Gabon also accounted for 0.6 percent of the company’s oil and gas output in 2022.
The group did not immediately respond to a question about whether the coup could potentially have an impact on its operations.
Gabon’s coup leaders say President Ali Bongo Ondimba is under house arrest and one of his sons has been arrested for “treason”.
“President Ali Bongo is under house arrest, surrounded by his family and doctors,” they said in a statement read out on state TV.
Bongo’s son and close adviser Noureddin Bongo Valentin, his chief of staff Ian Ghislain Ngoulou as well as his deputy, two other presidential advisers and the two top officials in the ruling Gabonese Democratic Party (PDG) “have been arrested”, a military leader said.
They are accused of treason, embezzlement, corruption and falsifying the president’s signature, among other allegations, he said.
France is unlikely to send its military to intervene in its former colony, Tara O’Connor, executive director of Africa Risk Consulting, told Al Jazeera from Bordeaux.
“I think what is very clear is that dynastic politics are extremely unpopular across West Africa. But I do think this is opportunistic on the part of the military officers following the military coups that have taken place, successfully it has to be said, in Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso, which are all neighbouring countries and with whom the military leadership will have relations,” O’Connor said.
“Gabon is yet another country that was formerly a dictatorship under Ali Bongo’s father. It actually moved towards democracy and has had relatively successful and peaceful elections. But I think much more interesting is its position in relation to France,” she said.
“In the past, France would have intervened with its military. But France has modernised its foreign policy towards Africa and now would only intervene at the invitation of says ECOWAS or any of the regional bodies or the African Union,” she added.
The French mining group Eramet says it has stopped its operations in Gabon
“For the safety of staff and the security of operations”, Eramet said it had stopped work and was following events closely.
It employs 8,000 people in the oil- and mineral-rich West African country, and its local subsidiary extracts manganese ore from the Moanda mines, the world’s largest manganese mines. The mineral is used in steelmaking and batteries.
Ovigwe Eguegu, analyst at the security consultancy group Afripolitika, says the apparent coup in Gabon is not similar to others witnessed in West Africa.
“The coup in Gabon came as a surprise but to some extent, it is not really a surprise because if you go back to 2016 for instance when there was an election, the vote was fraudulent with people protesting the results. That was Ali Bongo’s second term,” Eguegu said.
“Then in 2019, there was a coup attempt and those officers cited election irregularities saying it was not representative of the will of the people,” he added.
“Again, we are seeing the same pattern. The coup in Gabon is different from what we are seeing in other West African countries. While those other coups are more about security and governance, this is specifically about the electoral process,” he said.
Al Jazeera’s Ahmed Idris reporting from Niamey in Niger says people in Gabon are just waking up to the news.“We expect reactions on the streets. It’s expected that many people here will be happy,” he said.
“The common thread of all these coups in West Africa and Central Africa that we have seen over the past few years is basically economic stagnation, corruption and insecurity,” Idris said. “In the case of Gabon, it’s more like corruption and of course maladministration,” he added.
These are the latest pictures from the streets of the Gabonese capital, Libreville.
