The African Union on Thursday, August 31, 2023, suspended Gabon’s membership one day after military officers overthrew President Ali Bongo, the first regional response to the eighth military coup in West and Central Africa since 2020.
The takeover ended nearly six decades of Bongo family dynasty rule and created a new conundrum in a region hit by a wave of coups that Nigerian President Bola Tinubu called “the contagion of autocracy.”
General Brice Oligui Nguema, Gabon’s coup leader and former head of the presidential guard, will be sworn in as president on Monday.
“My fears were confirmed in Gabon that copycat cats will start doing the same thing until it is stop.” Tinubu, who heads West Africa’s main regional body ECOWAS, said on Thursday.
The African Union Peace and Security Council took the first step on Thursday by banning Gabon’s participation in all activities, organs and institutions until constitutional order is restore.
The Central African political bloc, of which Gabon is a member, also condemned the coup in a statement and said it planned a meeting of heads of state “soon” to determine how to respond. However, the date was not state.

Senior officers in Gabon announced their coup before dawn on Wednesday

shortly after the electoral body declared that Bongo easily won a third term in Saturday’s election. The junta declared the vote null and void, dissolved state institutions and closed the borders.
Later Wednesday video emergency showing Bongo being at his residence. Ask international allies for help but apparently unaware of what was happening around him.
Gabon’s main opposition platform, Alternance 2023, on Thursday thanked the junta for ending Bongo’s long-standing grip on power.
But representative Mike Jocktane added that the coup leaders must complete what he called an incomplete vote count. A complete tally would show that the main opposition candidate, Albert Ondo Ossa, had won, he said.
In the official results announced on Wednesday, Ondo Ossa came second after Bongo.

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