Teodoro Obiang Ngema Bashogo re-elected president of Equatorial Guinea

Teodoro Obiang Ngema Bashogo secured re-election to the presidency of Equatorial Guinea for the sixth time with 94.9%being the longest serving leader in the world (s.s. only monarchies are excluded), as well has been in power for over 43 years.

In 2016, when he was re-elected with 93.7% of the vote, he was said to he was preparing one of his sons as his successorvice-president Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mange – known as Teodorin – a lover of opulence and luxury, who has been convicted in France of “illegal profits”.

The 80-year-old African head of state had limited his public appearances and at the same time Teodorin was focusing on him. As of mid-December last year, most expected the ruling party to anoint Teodorin as its presidential candidate in his father’s place. But Teodoro Obiang Ngema Bashogo appears to have been convinced by his staff that a handover would be a risk at a time when falling hydrocarbon revenues and the pandemic have made the country even more dependent on foreign funding.

The Democratic Party of Equatorial Guinea (PDGE) has temporarily postponed announcing its presidential candidate until the 80-year-old head of state is back in the limelight.

“I have been in power for a long time, but the people still want me to be their president. This is the last time I will be a candidate”, he had declared in 2016 in the weekly newspaper Jeune Afrique. But it seems he’s reconsidered.

The very strict Teodoro Obiang – in contrast to his son – is said to follow a healthy and ascetic lifestyle, and exercise daily.

Obsession with coup attempts

On August 3, 1979, he led the military coup that overthrew his uncle, the bloodthirsty dictator Francisco Macia Nguema, who was executed by firing squad two months later.

He never ceased to fear that he might at some point be overthrown himself in a military coup. His praetorian guard is made up of his countrymen, but “for fear of the Jews” his closest bodyguards are Israelis, and palace security is partly outimgd to Zimbabwean and Ugandan guards.

Since taking power, he claims to have foiled at least ten coup or assassination attempts, blaming them on the exiled opposition and “foreign forces”.

Teodoro Obiang Ngema Bashogo took over an economy without great reimgs, but luck smiled on him with the discovery of a significant amount of oil in the country’s territorial waters in the early 1990s.

Equatorial Guinea, a very sparsely populated country, was in 2021 the third richest country in Africa in terms of GDP per capita, according to World Bank data. However, wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few families, while the vast majority of the 1.4 million inhabitants live below the poverty line.

The judicial adventures of the “prince”

Equatorial Guinea it is among the most corrupt states in the worldaccording to non-governmental organizations.

Teodorin Obiang (54 today), the president’s son, has been sentenced to a three-year suspended prison sentence and fined 30 million euros for an “illegal gains” case in France. In the UK his assets have been frozen and he has been banned from living there for “corruption” and “misappropriation of public funds”. In the US he was forced to forfeit $26 million in assets to end corruption charges.

In this small country, which political opponents of the Obiang dynasty call “North Korea of ​​Africa”arrests and disappearances of dissidents are common and many of them have found refuge abroad, particularly in Spain.