Report on Gabon election announcement is wrong and is withdrawn

LIBREVILLE, Gabon

An alert and story on the date of Gabon's presidential election have been withdrawn. They were published in error. The interim president did not announce an election date in his speech on Thursday in which he discussed the transition to democratic rule.

Earlier, it was published by some leading media houses that Gabon’s transitional leader, Brice Oligui Nguema said on Thursday that the central African country would hold a presidential election on March 22.

And that the announcement of the election date followed a referendum on a new constitution in November that was portrayed as a key step towards re-establishing democratic rule after Bongo was ousted.

Nguema was sworn in as interim leader in September 2023, after his junta ousted President Ali Bongo in the eighth coup in West and Central Africa since 2020.

The Gabonese largely welcomed the military’s ousting of Bongo, whose family’s poor management of the country’s oil wealth had led to a stagnant economy and stranded a third of the population in poverty.