Five Things To Know About Gabon

Published

2 years ago

August 30, 2023

Five key facts about Gabon, where military officers on Wednesday announced that they had taken power following elections that, according to official results, were won by President Ali Bongo Ondimba.

The Bongos

The small central African state has been ruled by the same family for more than 55 out of its 63 years since independence from France in 1960.

Bongo, 64, who was seeking a third term in Saturday’s election, took over when his father Omar died in 2009 after nearly 42 years in power.

Bongo senior, who took office in 1967, had the reputation of a kleptocrat — one of the richest men in the world, with a fortune derived from Gabon’s oil wealth.

His son grew up the carefree scion of a wealthy ruling family and was once known by his initials of ABO, Ali B — or, less flattering, “Monsieur Fils” (Mr Son).

In October 2018, Bongo suffered a stroke that sidelined him for 10 months. The episode stoked claims he was unfit to rule and fuelled a minor attempted coup.

Oil powerhouse

Gabon is one of the richest countries in Africa in terms of per-capita GDP, thanks largely to oil revenues and the small population of 2.3 million.

In the 1970s, the country discovered abundant oil reserves offshore, allowing it to build a strong middle class and earn the moniker “central Africa’s little emirate”.

Oil accounts for 60 percent of the country’s revenues.

But a third of the population still lives below the poverty line of $5.50 per day, according to the World Bank.

Africa’s ‘Eden’

Forests cover 88 percent of the surface of Gabon, providing a haven for gorillas, buffalo, panthers, elephants, chimpanzees and other species.

The country, which markets itself as the “last Eden”, has become a major advocate for conservation in a region where wildlife is being battered by wars, habitat destruction and the bushmeat trade.

In 2002, it set up a network of 13 national parks covering 11 percent of its territory.

One of the big success stories is conservation of critically endangered African forest elephants. Their global numbers have fallen 86 percent in 30 years but in Gabon they have doubled in a decade.

Healer or hallucinogenic?

A powerful psychoactive root found in Gabonese forests is used to make a drug that has been touted as a potential healer of heroin and cocaine addiction.

The hallucinogenic iboga root has long been used in an ancestral ritual known as “bwiti”, which combines worship of forest spirits with elements of Christianity.

High doses can have effects similar to LSD, mescaline or amphetamines, and cause anxiety, extreme apprehension and hallucinations.

But the pill form of the drug, ibogaine, has also been hailed for helping some drug addicts kick their habit.

Treatment centres using the drug have sprung up in countries including Costa Rica, New Zealand and the Netherlands.

Star striker

Gabon international Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, a former Chelsea forward, was one of the best strikers in the world in his heyday.

From Germany’s powerhouse Borussia Dortmund, where he stood out, he moved to Arsenal in 2018 and became joint top-scorer in the Premier League a year later.

For disciplinary issues Aubameyang was stripped of the Arsenal captaincy and his contract ripped up, after which he moved to Barcelona, then Chelsea before joining Olympique de Marseille.

UK Police Hunt Asylum Seeker Mistakenly Freed For Sex Offence

Published

13 hours ago

October 25, 2025

Editor

UK police were still hunting Saturday for an Ethiopian asylum seeker and convicted sex offender whose crimes sparked a wave of anti-immigration protests and who was accidentally released from prison.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer said he was “appalled” by Friday’s “totally unacceptable” error that saw 38-year-old Hadush Gerberslasie Kebatu freed rather than sent to an immigration detention centre.

“This man must be caught and deported for his crimes,” the UK leader added.

Kebatu had served the first month of a one-year sentence for sexually assaulting a teenage girl and a woman, but was reportedly due to be deported when the Prison Service mistake occurred.

Kebatu’s high-profile case earlier this year in Epping, northeast of London, sparked demonstrations in various English towns and cities where asylum seekers were believed to be housed, as well as counter-protests.

Justice Secretary David Lammy said late Friday night that Kebatu was “at large in London” after he was seen boarding a train to the capital in Chelmsford, eastern England.

Essex Police, which is leading the search with the help of London’s Metropolitan Police, said Saturday that “inquiries are continuing at pace this morning to locate and arrest” him.

“Officers worked throughout the night to track his movements, including scouring hours of CCTV footage,” the force added, noting “it is not lost on us that this situation is concerning to people”.

The Telegraph reported he was wrongly categorised as a prisoner due to be released on licence and handed a £76 ($101) discharge grant.

The father of Kebatu’s anonymous teenage victim told Sky News that “the justice system has let us down”.

Police arrested the asylum seeker in July after he repeatedly tried to kiss a 14-year-old girl and touch her legs, and made sexually explicit comments to her.

He also sexually assaulted an adult woman, placing a hand on her thigh, when she intervened to stop his interactions with the girl.

At the time, Kebatu was staying at Epping’s Bell Hotel, where scores of other asylum seekers have been accommodated, and which became the target of repeated protests.

Headline

UK Is A Home, Not Hotel, Kemi Badenoch Tells Immigrants, Starmer’s Govt

Published

2 days ago

October 23, 2025

Editor

UK Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch has slammed Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour government over its immigration policy, declaring that Britain is “a home, not a hotel.”

Badenoch accused Labour of weakening the country’s borders and enabling mass automatic citizenship.

In a 1:11-minute video posted on her official X account on Friday, Badenoch claimed Labour’s proposed reforms could allow up to two million immigrants to automatically qualify for British citizenship starting next year.

“From next year, two million immigrants can automatically claim British citizenship. Two million people! That’s nearly twice the population of Birmingham. That’s massive,” Badenoch said in the video.

Badenoch noted that the Conservative Party has introduced a deportation bill to bring immigration down.

NDLEA intercepts drugs hidden in snails, others meant for UK, US, DRC
Among the measures she endorsed in the video were deporting all foreign criminals, mandatory age checks, no more pretending to be kids, tougher visa rules and salary thresholds, disapplying the Human Rights Act to immigration cases, and no more abusing human rights laws to judge deportations. Make asylum support repayable, and no permanent right to stay in the UK if you’ve relied on benefits.

“Until that’s law, we won’t fix this. Labour should adopt it now. It’s time to get tough. That’s what the Conservatives’ Deportation Bill delivers, and we’re going to go further. Our country is a home, not a hotel. And if we don’t defend it, no one else will.”

In the caption that came with the video, she tweeted, “Labour has blocked every single measure we’ve put forward to cut immigration and stop abuse of the system.

“Now they’re pushing one half-arsed proposal — it’s weak; it won’t work. It’s time they stopped playing games and backed our Deportation Bill.”

Headline

King Charles To Pray With Pope Leo In Historic Vatican Visit

Published

3 days ago

October 23, 2025

Editor

King Charles III will on Thursday meet Pope Leo XIV at the Vatican and make history as the first head of the Church of England to pray publicly with the pontiff for five centuries.

The 76-year-old monarch, who is the supreme governor of the Church of England, arrived in Rome on Wednesday evening with his wife, Queen Camilla, for what Buckingham Palace described as a “historic” state visit.

It will be Charles’s first meeting with Leo since the US-born pope took over as head of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics in May, following the death of Pope Francis.

The royals will arrive at the Apostolic Palace at 10.45am (0845 GMT) for private talks with the pope.

The king and queen will then join an ecumenical service at midday (1000 GMT) in the Sistine Chapel led by Pope Leo and the archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, currently the senior cleric of the Church of England.

Broadcast live by Vatican media, it will be the first time a reigning English or British monarch has prayed publicly with a pope since English king Henry VIII broke with Rome in 1534.

Triggered by the pope’s refusal to annul the king’s marriage so he could marry another woman, the schism made the monarch head of the separate Church of England.

Thursday’s service, held beneath Michelangelo’s spectacular ceiling frescoes, will be centred on conservation and protecting the environment, a cause championed by Charles.

It will bring together Catholic and Anglican traditions, with the choir from the Sistine Chapel joined by that from Saint George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle, one of the king’s residences.

– Schism –

The religious break between London and Rome remains, even if there has been a significant rapprochement in recent decades.

In 1961, the late Queen Elizabeth II, Charles’s mother, became the first British monarch to visit the Holy See since the split.

The law was changed in 2013 so that marrying a Catholic would no longer disqualify someone from becoming monarch — although they still have to be a Protestant themselves.

The rapprochement is important because “Anglicanism was born in reaction to the Catholic Church, and therefore in opposition,” said Hyacinthe Destivelle, a French priest and member of the Vatican’s dicastery (department) for promoting Christian unity.

This is no longer the case, despite “theological differences in recent decades”, he told AFP.

Unlike the Roman Catholic Church, the Church of England — the mother church of the world’s 85-million-strong Anglican community — ordains women and allows priests to marry.

Sarah Mullally was recently named the first female archbishop of Canterbury, the Church’s top cleric, although she has yet to officially take up her post.

– Royal Confrater –

Charles and Queen Camilla are also set to take part in a service at the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls in Rome, one of four major papal basilicas, which has historic links with the English crown.

The king will be made a “Royal Confrater” of the basilica and presented with a specially designed seat for use by him and future British monarchs.

Charles has visited the Vatican several times and met privately with Pope Francis on April 9, just days before the pontiff’s death.

The king sent his son and heir, William, to the funeral and his brother, Prince Edward, the Duke of Edinburgh, to Leo’s inauguration mass.

The visit comes as the Catholic Church celebrates the Jubilee, a year-long event held every 25 years, which has drawn millions of pilgrims to the Vatican.

It also comes at a delicate time for Charles, following new revelations about his brother Prince Andrew, who is mired in a scandal surrounding late US sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Andrew announced on Friday that he would relinquish his title as Duke of York, reportedly under pressure from Charles. He had already stepped back from royal duties in 2019.

AFP