Gen Brice Oligui Nguema is the head of the Presidential Republican Guard of Gabon, the country’s most powerful security unit and the forces most loyal to the President of the Republic and responsible for his security.
A Cousin to former President Ali Bongo and a son of a military officer. Nguema trained at the military academy in Meknes, Morocco, and rapidly advanced in his career: in a short time he would become one of the aides in the field of ex-president Omar Bongo his Uncle, President Ali’s father, remaining in his entourage until his death in 2009.
The first relations with Omar’s successor are not, however, idyllic: that year the ambitious Nguema is “sent” abroad, where Ali Bongo appoints him military attache first at the Gabonese embassy in Morocco, then later in Senegal. It will take almost ten years to reinstate him in high-level security functions at home: returning in 2018 after the stroke suffered by the president while he was in Saudi Arabia, Nguema is then first appointed to the intelligence service of the Presidential Guard, then promoted for two years later as director of the same military corps in place of General Grégoire Kouna, another cousin of the president.
As head of the Presidential Guard, Nguema was charged with strengthening Gabon’s internal security systems and managing their equipment. It was he who received, last July 21, the delivery of four reconnaissance armored vehicles sold by France, material already ordered in 2020 to strengthen the forces of the armed corps but whose release had been delayed by Paris on the one hand due to the alleged difficulty for Libreville to settle the bill in its entirety, on the other hand due to the French fear that the vehicles could be involved in operations to repress any protests linked to the elections of 26 August.
Reluctance promptly disappeared, analysts observe, after the payment of 52 million dollars made at the end of June by the Gabonese government for the purchase of an Airbus C295 for military transport. Cheered on by hundreds of soldiers in Libreville who today cheered “President Oligui”, the officer seems to be weighing the possibility at the moment. “I still don’t declare myself”, he said in an interview with “Le Monde”, underlining that the force action was necessary against a president who “did not have the right to exercise a third mandate”, but holding back on his proclamation to “new strong man” of the country. “We need a consensus, we will make proposals and decide who will lead the transition,” he declared.
For Nguema, the important thing is to “take things into your own hands”. “It is known that there is discontent in Gabon and in addition there is the president’s illness. Everyone talks about it, but no one takes responsibility for it,” he said, explaining that this is why “the army decided to do it”.
Besides military and diplomatic duties, Nguema was seen as entrepreneurial and also believed to be a millionaire in Gabonese circles.
If Nguema is not cited in the Ali Bongo family’s so-called “illicit gains” case – more than 33 apartments and private villas purchased in France, worth over 150 million euros – Gen Brice Oligui is not above suspicion of personal enrichment. According to the US anti-corruption organization Occrp (Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project), between 2015 and 2018 the officer bought in cash and without a mortgage three properties in the suburbs of Washington for a total amount of over one million of dollars. According to the survey, Nguema chose to purchase them in “middle- and working-class neighborhoods in the Maryland suburbs of Hyattsville and Silver Spring.” The property alone in Silver Spring, the third most populous place in Maryland, would have cost 447 thousand dollars.
When reporters questioned Nguema about these properties, he said it was a private affair.
“I think whether in France or in the United States, a private life is a private life that [should be] respected.”
According to local media reports, Nguema also composed a song that included the line: “I would defend my president with honour and loyalty”.
To Gen Brice Nguema, Ali Bongo can retire and continue to enjoy his rights like every other Gabonese citizen and while Bongo is currently under house arrest after winning the cancelled election with 64.27 percent of the vote, Gabon’s soldiers have apparently begun celebrating Nguema.
