Update on Gabon coup: Deposed Pres. Ali Bongo calls for help after being placed under house arrest

Footages have emerged how deposed President of Gabon, Ali Bongo Ondimba, called for help from friends of Gabon as he is being placed under house arrest by the coupists following the overthrow of his government on Wednesday.

The 64-year-old Bongo is being kept under house arrest hours after a group of Gabonese military officers appeared on television announcing they were “putting an end to the current regime”.

Persecondnews reports that Bongo in short viral video in his palatial residence disclosed that he doesn’t know the whereabouts of his son.

But the mutinous soldiers, in a statement made it known that one of his sons has been arrested for “high treason” and have also cancelled the recent election results and also dissolved “all the institutions of the republic.”

Bongo said: “ I am sending a message to all the friends we have all over the world, to tell them to make noise, the people here have arrested me. My son is somewhere, my wife is in another place and I am at the residence.

“ I don’t know what is going on, so I am callin you to make noise, make noise really.”

Persecondnews earlier reported that street celebration broke out in Libreville after the announcement of the exit of Bongo from office, his overthrow ends his family’s 53 years hold on power in Gabon.

Omar Bongo ruled from 1967 to 2009 and Ali Bongo took over after the demise of his father from 2009-2023.

Unlike Niger and two other West-African countries run by military junta, Gabon has not been wrecked by Jihadi violence.

The country with a population of over 2.3 million people is seen as relatively stable.