Soldiers seize power after election in Central African nation of Gabon

A group of high-ranking military leaders on Wednesday arrested the country’s president and threw out the results of a recent national election. The coup attempt occurred hours after Gabon’s election authority said that President Ali Bongo Ondimba had won a third term in office. Ondimba has been president since 2009, following his father’s 41-year rule. The coup leaders said they planned to dissolve government institutions and close the nation’s borders.

Have there been other coup attempts there in the past? Military officials in Gabon launched an attempted coup in 2019 after the president suffered a stroke, but the movement failed. Citizens took to the streets Wednesday to celebrate the coup, saying they were discontented with the ruling family. Human rights group Freedom House has said the country’s elections are unfair. This attempted coup follows a string of six coups in other West and Central African countries since 2020.

Dig deeper: Listen to Myrna Brown and Lynde Langdon’s report on The World and Everything in It podcast about the coup in Niger.