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Junta chief wins 94.85% in Gabon vote landslide: final results
Junta chief wins 94.85% in Gabon vote landslide: final results
by AFP Staff Writers
Libreville (AFP) April 25, 2025

Gabon's Brice Oligui Nguema won 94.85 percent of the vote, according to final results released on Friday, confirming the junta chief's landslide election as the central African country's president.

That result marks a five-percent increase on his score in the provisional results given the day after the April 12 ballot, the country's first since Oligui ended more than five decades of Bongo dynasty rule in his August 2023 coup.

Oligui, who temporarily hung up his general's uniform to stand for office, was elected president in a single round with 588,074 ballots, according to the electoral commission's final results.

His main rival Alain-Claude Bilie By Nze, the last prime minister under ousted leader Ali Bongo Ondimba, likewise saw an increase in his vote share, coming second with 3.11 percent compared to his provisional 3.02 percent score.

None of the six other candidates broke the one-percent barrier.

Turnout stood at 70.11 percent in an election marking Gabon's return to constitutional normality and civilian rule after 19 months under Oligui's military leadership.

No appeal against the election's fairness and conduct had been lodged within the deadline, the electoral commission added.

While he chose not to appeal against the outcome of the vote, the day after the provisional results' release Bilie By Nze slammed a "victory snatched away in opaque and contestable conditions" and a lack of equity in the campaign period.

Neither patriarch Omar Bongo, who ruled from 1967 to 2009, nor his son Ali Bongo, ever obtained vote shares as large as that scooped by Oligui, besides the three elections in 1973, 1979 and 1986 where Bongo senior was the sole candidate.

Oligui, who will on Saturday attend the funeral of Pope Francis, is set to be sworn in on May 3 in the Gabonese capital Libreville, according to the presidency.

Niger says jihadists kill 12 soldiers near Mali border
Niamey, Niger (AFP) April 26, 2025 - Niger's army said Saturday jihadists killed 12 of its soldiers in the west of the country near the Malian border.

An anti-terrorism unit was "attacked in a cowardly fashion by terrorist elements concealed by civilian camps" on Friday and 12 of its members "made the ultimate sacrifice", it said.

The attackers struck about 10 km (six miles) north of Sakoira, near Tillaberi, a large city in western Niger.

Nigerien reinforcements later "forced the enemy to flee northward" near the Malian border, the army said.

"A large-scale pursuit operation has been launched" and two suspected attackers arrested, it added.

The vast region around Tillaberi near the borders of Mali and Burkina Faso has for years been the scene of deadly attacks by jihadist groups affiliated with Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State group.

Niger has been governed since July 2023 by a military junta that seized power in a coup.

Mali political parties fear dissolution by ruling junta
Bamako (AFP) April 26, 2025 - A coalition of around a hundred political parties accused Mali's ruling junta of wanting to dissolve them, in a joint statement to the media in Bamako on Saturday.

Such gatherings are highly unusual in the troubled west African state, where the ruling junta has repressed all discordant voices and silenced the opposition.

The Sahel country has been grappling with widespread insecurity for more than a decade and the military seized power in back-to-back coups in 2020 and 2021.

"We don't want political parties to be dissolved," said Abdallah Yattara, a member of the Yelema party, at the coalition's news conference.

The authorities have cancelled a meeting scheduled for Sunday in Bamako by the political coalition.

The authorities have been overseeing talks over the past two weeks for reforms that include one proposal to dissolve existing political groups, keeping only a handful of pro-junta parties.

The adoption of the reforms was one of the recommendations of a junta-led national consultation in late 2022 to "build a way out of the crisis" in Mali.

The coalition, in a joint statement read out by spokesman Oumar Ibrahim Toure, objected that they had not been invited to the talks, denouncing what it described as "a pseudo-concertation".

The news conference went ahead under surveillance from a significant police presence, an AFP journalist noted.

The ruling military junta failed to honour a commitment to oversee a return to civilian rule by the end of March 2024 and has postponed the presidential election to an unspecified date.

The junta suspended activities of parties and political associations between April and July 2024, warning of a risk of "subversion".

Consultations boycotted by the main parties, in May 2024 brought a "recommendation" that the military remain in power "for two to five more years".

It also proposed the candidacy of the current head of the junta when presidential polls are finally held.

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