The president of Gabon, Omar Bongo is dead at 73. The people of his tiny country have been lumbered with their leader for far too long. Would he be missed and where does his death leave Gabonese? 

The Late Omar Bongo       Photo:Courtesy

I was speaking to a 34-year old friend when she mentioned hearing news about Omar Bongo, the late president of Gabon. She said she was just too surprised she’d never heard of him. Is it surprising that a lady from Ghana had never heard of Omar Bongo? Well yes - there’s every reason to have heard of Omar Bongo; until his death, he was leader of a tiny country in Africa; he was in the league of Nicolas Sarkozy, Yasser Arafat, Haile Selassie, Joseph Stalin, James Madison, Kim Jong-Il, Dmitry Medvedev and Nana Akuffo Addo in terms of height; he was one of the richest leaders in Africa but most of all he was the longest-serving head of state in Africa. And there’s another reason – his country has crude oil in commercial quantity. She knows who is leader in Zimbabwe, Cuba, Venezuela and even Russia but doesn’t know who is leader of Gabon or Cameroon. 

It is not clear how many Gabonese would be beside themselves with grief but I bet many may have been waiting in the wings for a chance to blow Omar Bongo’s brains. The country has had only two presidents since independence from France in 1960 and Mr. Bongo had been in charge since 1967. 

There are only two and just two reasons why people like my lady friend Makeda may never have heard of the man who ruled Gabon for 42 years. The first and most important reason is the country’s oil. Crude oil accounts for about 50 per cent of the country’s GDP. According to a 2008 statistical Energy Survey by BP, Gabon had proved oil reserves of 1.995 billion barrels (0.16% of the world’s reserve) at the end of 2007 and produced 230 thousand barrels a day for the same period. So it is quite alright. 

Even though Gabon discovered new oil fields recently, its oil is nothing like what Nigeria or Libya has but enough to make Africa worried. Still, that does not fully explain why Omar Bongo should be leader for life? 

The Americans, French, British and the rest of Western Europe protected Omar Bongo against the will of his people. The Europeans and their American cousins prefer to have a political puppet in power than encourage multiparty democracy because of their selfish interests. 

And here’s why - more than half of the crude oil from Gabon is exported to Obama’s America and the rest goes to Western Europe. France has a military base in Gabon so they imagine they have much to lose if there’s a change of government. 

In a report for the BBC in 2007, World Affairs correspondent Mark Doyle reported that Omar Bongo’s rule was “characterised by the co-opting of the opposition - using the country's considerable oil revenues to grease the path to power.” In other words, President Bongo fought off opposition to his presidency by bribing his opponents. 

There’s no question the people of Gabon have enjoyed relative peace under Omar Bongo but that is because of Western protection. I’ve been scouring over Western Press reports (BBC, CNN, Telegraph, The Guardian, NY Times) on Gabon and why the country had been stable in spite of one man been in charge for more than 40 years. 

What I find most amazing in many of the reports I read is that –the Press credits Gabon’s peace to the oil and not the protection the country’s corrupt elite get from their Western governments. 

In an updated BBC News Channel report on Gabon - 16th April 2009 - the BBC reported that Gabon had escaped from civil strife partly due “to oil and to the presence of French troops.” 

The man who was once known as Albert-Bernard Omar Bongo is dead but he’s left his country teetering on the brings of strife and potentially tribal war. He has bequeathed the patient people of Gabon a power crisis. His long stay in power was very embarrassing yet the so called vanguards of democracy couldn’t care less as long as he gave them unfettered access to Gabon’s oil fields. 

The attitude of these equally corrupt Western nations, some of whom do not even have elected leaders for starters threatens the very foundation of civilization. A country like Britain is in political crises mainly because of corruption. Many of the country’s MPs would have lost their seats if there were a general election. UK politicians are corrupt and no better from their counterparts in Nigeria or anywhere else and they have lost all moral authority to tell a nation like Robert Mugabe about good governance. Unfortunately, President Obama’s fantasies cannot materialise if Western nations do not break from this cycle of greed and hypocrisy. 

How good is democracy if some leaders are foisted on their people and others like Omar Bongo, Paul Biya of Cameroon can stay on for several decades? 

The biggest lesson for a country like Ghana is to guard against Western nations who are bent on using locals to subvert the pillars of democracy as long as they can gain access to our newly discovered fortune – crude oil. They would fall over each other to get their hands on the oil. We should look forward to opening up to honest nations who are willing to come to our countries not to exploit but to share expertise and trade in a manner that would be mutually beneficial. The status quo as it stands now is intolerable cannot be sustained indefinitely. It is time for these superimposed policies from our “trading partners” to stop and the support for puppet regimes to halt. 

By Ras Mubarak

Broadcaster/Writer and Publicist

NDC Europe.

[email protected]