Adama and Moussa Sarr had lost track of the exact number of days they had been at sea.

The brothers were drifting somewhere off the coast of West Africa, in a traditional Senegalese fishing canoe known as a pirogue. They were two of 39 passengers in total – all malnourished, many close to death.

When a fishing vessel appeared in the distance one day, Adama, 21, was so weak he could only stare, he said. Moussa, 17, slipped into the water to swim.

He would almost certainly have drowned, had the fishing crew not spotted him in the water and plucked him to safety.

When they drew alongside the pirogue, they found Adama and the rest of the survivors and seven bodies. The pirogue had set out from Senegal five weeks earlier, with 101 souls on board.

The survivors had drifted hundreds of miles on one of the most dangerous migrant routes in the world – the North Atlantic sea passage from Senegal to the Canary Islands, a Spanish archipelago about 1,000 miles away by sea.

They had left on 10 July, from the coastal village of Fass Boye. Adama and Moussa came from a long line of fishermen in the village. The boys learned to fish together and worked a pirogue together.

But like many young people in Senegal, they felt the pull of Europe. “Everyone wants to go on the boats,” Adama said. “It’s the thing you’re supposed to do.”

He was sitting in the shaded courtyard of a family home, safely back in Senegal but noticeably thinner than before. The journey had begun at dusk, he said. He and Moussa, along with two cousins, Pape and Amsoutou, aged 40 and 20, joined the pirogue a little way off the coast as it set off into the night.

Unlike the Mediterranean, there are no patrols on the North Atlantic route – no-one proactively searching for lost or distressed boats. It is easy to founder without being seen. If you miss the Canaries, or Cape Verde, you can drift into the Atlantic and disappear.

For the first three days, Adama and Moussa’s pirogue, powered by an outboard motor, battled against strong headwinds. But on the fourth day, the wind died down and the boat began to progress, Adama said. The passengers believed they had only a few more days at sea.

When the sixth day passed with no sight of land, an argument erupted over whether to push on or turn back.

“The captain ruled that we should push on, because we had enough food and water and the wind was quiet,” Adama said.

The passengers grew confident again and began to eat lots of food, he said, and they used drinking water to wash their hands for prayers.

It was around day six that the food and water began to run out. There were four children on board, and some older people gave the last of their food to the young. Some hoarded even after people began to die.

Adama couldn’t remember the exact date of the first death, but it was shortly after the first week passed, he said – a fishing captain, used to being on the water but not young. It was six more days until the next person died. Then the deaths came every day.

“At first, we said a prayer for each dead person and laid their body onto the ocean,” Adama said. “Then later we just threw the bodies into the water because we didn’t even have the energy to pray. We just needed to get rid of the corpses.”

Back in Fass Boye, news was spreading through the village that the boat had not arrived. “We all knew it should be five or six days by boat to Spain,” Adama’s mother, Sokhna, said. “When a week had passed with no news I stopped eating. I became sick from stress.”

Nearly everyone on the pirogue was from Fass Boye or nearby, and everyone in the village seemed to know someone aboard. The families began to do anything they could, alerting local authorities and migration NGOs. The founder of one NGO even tweeted a warning that the boat was missing, two weeks after its departure, but the warning went unheeded and the boat drifted for three more weeks.

On the pirogue, the four men from the family stuck together, but they were growing weaker and weaker. The eldest cousin, Pape, died first, Adama said. “Before he passed, he said, ‘If death must happen, I wish that I die and you three survive’.”

Then Adama’s younger cousin, Amsoutou, disappeared. One morning they woke up and Amsoutou was simply gone.

Adama and Moussa hung on, sipping seawater and baking under the sun. Each night they looked for lights from the Canary Islands but the lights never appeared.

Nobody in Fass Boye seemed to blame the migrants for taking the risk. More than a third of the country lives in poverty, according to the World Bank. The young see few opportunities at home. “Macky Sall sold the ocean,” said Assane Niang, a 23-year-old fishing captain, referring to the Senegalese president. Fishermen in Fass Boye say the government has granted too many licences to foreign trawlers, which overfish their waters and deplete the catch.

Niang was sitting on the beach in the shade of a pirogue, knitting generator covers he can sell to help make ends meet. “If we had other alternatives we would stay, but we cannot sit here and do nothing,” he said. “We are trying to support our families.”

There is social pressure on the young to try to leave on the boats, and there can be stigma attached to those who fail or never try.

So much so that the sea route to Spain has earned its own grim slang in Senegal’s Wolof language: “Barcelona or death.”

The wooden pirogues the smugglers use are not suitable for the voyage. They are often poorly constructed. They lack navigation technology and are liable to run out of petrol and be pushed off course. And yet the number of migrants using the route to reach Spain has been rising every year.

According to the International Organisation for Migration, about 68,000 people have successfully reached the Canary Islands by boat from West Africa since January 2020 and about 2,700 have been recorded dead or disappeared. But the number of casualties is likely significantly higher, because fatal accidents are more likely to go unrecorded on this route.

“We call them invisible shipwrecks,” said Safa Msehli, a spokeswoman for the IOM. “A boat washes ashore with nobody aboard, or a body washes ashore not linked to a known capsized boat.”

Part of the problem was that people leaving Fass Boye, particularly fishermen, were too confident in their chances, said Abdou Karim, a lifelong fisherman and the father of Pape Sarr, who died on the boat.

“The fisherman think that, if they get into trouble, they will be able to swim,” he said. “But there is a limit. You cannot swim forever. The ocean will not hold you.”

And yet, young fishermen in Fass Boye said they were still willing to take the risk.

“I am thinking about going on a boat right now,” said Niang, the fisherman on the beach. “The tragedies will not stop us from trying.”

About a month into Adama and Moussa’s voyage, a large ship appeared on the horizon and more than 20 people decided to to take their chances in the water, Adama said. But he knew it was too far.

Many of the remaining survivors were barely able to move, he said. Then on 14 August, exactly five weeks after they had departed, they caught sight of the Spanish fishing boat that would rescue them.

The Spanish crew helped them aboard and put the seven bodies into plastic sheets. Adama and Moussa lay together on the deck of the fishing vessel.

They had survived the pirogue. But Moussa was too weak. He was the last of the 63 people who died on the voyage.

“He died right there on the deck,” Adama said. “In front of my eyes.”

The survivors were taken to Cape Verde and spent six days receiving medical treatment, before the majority were flown back to Dakar. Those who could walk were given prescriptions and sent back to Fass Boye.

When news had broken of the number of deaths, there was a brief spasm of violent protest in the village that brought the police to town. Some relatives were arrested, including a member of Adama and Moussa’s family.

The survivors were harassed in their homes by curious residents and relatives of the dead, families said. So one day after they arrived home, they were all sent back out of Fass Boye to recuperate elsewhere. Adama and his mother Sokhna went to stay with close relatives nearby. They were spending their days resting, praying, and avoiding asking Adama about his ordeal.

The family had lost three sons and got one back. Fass Boye had seen 101 set out on the water and 37 come home.

“It changes a place,” said Abdou Karim, Pape’s father, silently counting prayer beads in one hand.

“Even one soul is a lot,” he said. “And this is more than 60. It is a lot for one place.”

Culled from the BBC

General Brice Oligui Nguema, who was named Gabon’s new leader in the hours following a military takeover on Wednesday, served the central African country’s long-time former president Omar Bongo before turning on his son, ousted leader Ali Bongo.

General Nguema has been chief of the republican guard, the country’s most powerful army unit, since 2019, with close sources describing him as charismatic and respected. The first statement announcing the coup was read out in the courtyard of the presidential palace, a fortress protected by his military unit.

Said to be discreet and secretive, Nguema was absent from the first three statements read out by senior army officers on national television to announce the coup.

But Gabonese television kept broadcasting the same images: a man, apparently Nguema, in fatigues and a green beret being carried through the streets of the capital Libreville by jubilant soldiers chanting, “Oligui président.” 

Nguema also emerged as a spokesperson in the hours following the announcement, answering questions from French newspaper “Le Monde”.

Bongo – who was declared the winner of Saturday’s elections just an hour before the coup began – had been forcibly “retired” but he still “enjoys all his rights”, Nguema said. “He had no right to serve a third term; the Constitution had been flouted and the election method itself was not good. So the army has decided to turn the page, to fulfill its responsibilities.”

He underscored the “discontent” in Gabon and Bongo’s “illness”, referring to a stroke in 2018.

As Bongo was confined to house arrest, Nguema himself was named to lead Gabon’s transitional authority, held aloft by his troops amid jubilant celebrations in the streets of the capital Libreville and the economic hub of Port-Gentil.

A ‘man of consensus’

Born to a Fang father, Gabon’s main ethnic group, Nguema, 48, mostly grew up with his mother in Haut-Ogooue province, a Bongo stronghold.

Nguema served as an aide-de-camp to Ali Bongo’s father, Omar Bongo, who ruled Gabon with an iron fist for almost 42 years until his death in 2009.

“He’s someone who knows the Gabonese military apparatus very well, a good soldier, trained at good military schools,” including Morocco’s Meknes royal military academy, according to a member of Bongo’s Gabonese Democratic Party (PDG) who was speaking on condition of anonymity.

“When I met him, he was a fairly intelligent man, easy to talk to and not afraid of journalists,” Francis Kpatindé, a journalist and lecturer specialising in Gabon at Sciences-Po University Paris, told FRANCE 24.

Nguema was known to be extremely close to the elder Bongo, serving him from 2005 until his death in a Barcelona hospital.

But Nguema was sidelined in 2009 after Ali Bongo was elected to succeed his father, beginning a 10-year stint as a military attaché at Gabon’s embassies in Morocco and Senegal.

He returned to prominence in 2018 as the republican guard’s intelligence chief, replacing Ali Bongo’s half-brother Frederic Bongo, before getting promoted to general six months later.

As the keystone of Gabon’s security forces, the bald and athletically built Nguema pushed Ali Bongo to improve his men’s working and living conditions by upgrading their facilities, funding schools for soldiers’ children and refurbishing accommodations.

The measures earned him respect and sympathy from his colleagues, according to the PDG source.

“He isn’t very talkative, but very appreciated by his men. He’s a Julius Caesar, and Julius Caesar cares for the comfort of his legionaries,” the source said, referring to the Roman general.

The former colleague praised Nguema as “a man of consensus, who never raises his voice, who listens to everyone and systematically seeks compromise”.

Nguema included officers from all army branches in the junta’s Committee for the Transition and Restoration of Institutions, which has been established to lead Gabon into its next political era. Coup leaders have not yet offered a timeline for a return to civilian rule.

Source: AFP

Berlin Conference of 1884-1885 was undeniably one of the biggest evil summits in modern history. Greedy and racist European colonialists sat down in the German city and divided Africans as if they were sharing bread on a breakfast table.

The conference was organized by Otto von Bismarck, the first chancellor of Germany at the request of King Leopold II of Belgium, the Western genocidal barbarian that murdered more than 10 million innocent Africans in Congo.

Most Africans are not even aware of this genocide in Congo perpetrated by the Belgium colonialists because it is not in our history books written by the white colonialists.

European colonialism in Africa lasted more than a century with only the ancient Kingdom of Ethiopia spared because they defeated the Italian colonialists on the battlefield.

Trillions and trillions of dollars were stolen from Africa, millions of Africans were murdered by the European colonialists and Africans were massively brainwashed that they had no history before European colonialism.

The wave of ‘independence’ in Africa from the 1950s and 1960s did not represent true independence. What actually happened was that colonialism was cleverly replaced with neocolonialism by the genocidal imperialist barbarians of the West.

The massive looting of rich resources in Africa continued under Western puppet leadership. The courageous African leaders who refused to dance to the tune of the European colonialists were eliminated.

This was what happened to African heroes, Patrick Lumumba of Congo and Thomas Sankara of Burkina Faso. Congo has all mineral resources except for crude oil.

The uranium used by the US regime to make the atomic bombs unleashed on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was mined in Congo.

French greed in Africa

Among the European colonialists, French colonialism was more brutal and exploitative.

France killed more than 1.5 million civilians in Algeria alone. They murdered tens of thousands of civilians in other African countries.

One of the Modus Operandi of the French colonialists was to assemble Islamic scholars in a hall and exterminate all of them. They did this in Algeria, Chad, Mali and Senegal.

And the greed of their neocolonialism is extreme. Even after independence, France is still controlling the wealth of its former colonies in Africa.

The rich resources of French nations are still controlled by France and they continue to pay colonial tax to France.

French goods and services dominate their markets. The domineering presence of France in these countries has been excruciating and devastating for local populations.

Niger Republic does not know the quantity of uranium France was taking from there, which is worst than slavery.

No evil lasts forever

There is a popular saying that “No evil lasts forever”.

France’s neocolonialism in Africa will not last forever. Popular military coups against puppets of France imperialism have started and are gathering momentum.

The recent military coup in the West African state of Niger Republic does not stand in isolation but follows similar upheavals in the neighboring countries of Mali, Burkina Faso, and Guinea in recent years.

Mali is facing insurgency that is backed by Western hegemony. Mali expelled French troops because they were actively aiding the insurgents to justify its military presence in the African country.

Now, on Wednesday, we woke up with the news of another puppet of the Western hegemonic barbarians in Gabon overthrown by the military. Ali Bango inherited the Gabon presidency from his corrupt Father, Omar Bongo.

Early on Wednesday, some military personnel appeared on state TV and announced that they were seizing power and dislodging a family that has ruled the country for 56 years.

The military officers introduced themselves as members of the Committee of Transition and the Restoration of Institutions.

“Today the country is undergoing a severe institutional, political, economic, and social crisis,” the officers said in a statement, dubbing the recent election illegitimate.

“In the name of the Gabonese people … we have decided to defend the peace by putting an end to the current regime.”

Pertinently, Gabon’s former president had 70 bank accounts, 39 apartments, 2 Ferraris, 6 Mercedes Benz cars, 3 Porsches and a Bugatti in France. He ruled for 42 years (from 1967 to 2009). French leaders loved Bongo because he was loyal to them.

His son, Ali Bongo has been the president for 14 years (2009 – 2023). He has just been overthrown in a  coup.

Failure of Western liberal democracy

The fact is that the Western liberal democracy has not only failed in Africa but has failed woefully.

Democracy in Africa has become a tool for the corrupt ruling elites to steal the wealth of their respective countries and transfer it to Western financial institutions while the populations remain in abject poverty and hunger.

Democracy is just another system of government hijacked by the Western hegemonic barbarians, the biggest enemies of the human race. Democracy is now an imperialist tool of Western hegemony in Africa. This is a bitter and undeniable fact.

The people of Gabon will definitely celebrate this military coup as it marks the end of French interference and looting in their country. Another setback for the French leaders.

Africa must rise again

The most noticeable current in Mali, Burkina Faso, Guinea, Niger Republic and Gabon is that the change of governments all have popular support as the people of those countries are tired of France’s imperialism, arrogance and terrorism.

Today France has the 4th largest gold reserves in the world and there is no single gold mine in France.

These gold mines are all in Mali, Niger Republic and other African countries. The France neocolonialism in Africa must end. Its time has come.

Culled from Presstv

The head of the Republican Guards, Brice Clotaire Oligui Nguema, was selected by his peers to lead the transition in Gabon after they took over power on Wednesday, August 30, 2023.

Early Wednesday, the military announced that they had taken over power from Ali Bongo Ondimba, citing a degraded social atmosphere that according to them can lead to chaos in the future.

They also said the August 26, presidential elections were fraudulently carried out.

The country’s electoral commission, announced at midnight on Tuesday that incumbent, Ali Bongo won 64.27% with Ondo Ossa, having 30%.

His position as the leader of the Republican Guards was to protect the president.

The coup on Wednesday shows that the Gabonese military had enough of the irregularities ongoing in the country.

In April 2020, Colonel Brice Clotaire Oligui Nguema took over the head of the Republican Guard, an elite army corps responsible for protecting the head of state, replacing General Grégoire Kouna, also cousin of Ali Bongo Ondimba. Maybe Bongo’s mistake was replacing his cousin with someone who would one day oust him from power.

Source: Cameroon News Agency

A group of rebellious military officers declared a coup in the central African nation of Gabon, minutes after the results of the presidential election showed that President Ali Bongo had won a third term.

Gabonese junta putschists declared their intention on television on Wednesday, saying they have overthrown the government of President Ali Bongo.

“We have decided to defend the peace by putting an end to the current regime,” one of the military officers in the coupsters’ group said on national television channel Gabon 24, declaring that the election results were null, all state institutions dissolved and all borders closed until further notice.

In the meantime, the sounds of gunshots were heard throughout Gabon’s capital, Libreville, after the television appearance.

President Bongo first took office in 2009, after the death of his father, Omar Bongo who had become president in 1967.

The latest elections were overshadowed by a lack of international observers, raising concerns about transparency.

After the elections the government curtailed internet service and imposed a nightly curfew across the nation, saying it was necessary to prevent the spread of misinformation

An attempted coup, when Bongo was recovering from a stroke, was thwarted in January 2019 after armed military officers took hostages and announced the creation of a “National Restoration Council” to “restore democracy in Gabon.” The mutiny was quickly put down with only a few casualties.

In a related development, the European Union’s Foreign Policy Chief Josep Borrell expressed concern about the situation in West Africa, saying the current developments in that region were important for European leaders.

Borrell added that the EU defense ministers would discuss the situation in Gabon, and that if it was confirmed that a coup in Gabon had taken place, then this would heap more instability on the region.

“If this is confirmed, it is another military coup which increases instability in the whole region,” said Borrell, speaking at a meeting of EU defense ministers in Toledo, Spain.

Gabon, with a population of 2.3 million, shares borders with Cameroon, the Republic of the Congo and Equatorial Guinea. It was a colony of France before gaining independence in 1960.

Source: Presstv

Gabon’s government blocked internet access and imposed a curfew on Saturday after a general election marked by major voting delays, as the opposition cried foul over a poll they hoped would halt President Ali Bongo’s bid to extend his family’s 56-year grip on power.

The Central African nation was holding presidential, legislative, and local polls simultaneously for the first time with tensions running high amid fears electoral system changes could sow doubt about the legitimacy of the result and provoke unrest.

Bongo, 64, who succeeded his father Omar in 2009, is seeking a third term against 18 challengers, six of whom backed a joint nominee in an effort to narrow the race.

Voting was due to start at 0700 GMT, but at least five polling stations in the capital Libreville saw voters waiting hours for polls to open, a Reuters reporter said.

“This election is very tense because I don’t think a vote in our country has ever started so late,” said voter Jeff Mbou at a polling station in Libreville’s Martine Oulabou school, where voting started nearly four hours late.

It was not immediately clear how many areas were affected by the delays or if all voters were able to cast their votes. The election commission did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

Any irregularities will add to concerns about the post-electoral period, which in Gabon has previously seen violent protests linked to the opposition disputing the result.

There is no fixed deadline for the announcement of results, but joint opposition candidate Albert Ondo Ossa, 69, and his alliance on Saturday were already questioning the legitimacy of the outcome.

Citing the threat of online disinformation, the Gabonese government cut the internet until further notice and imposed a night-time curfew from Sunday “in order to prevent any misbehaviour and to preserve the security of the entire population,” according to a statement read out on national television on Saturday evening.

Fraud allegation

The vote is a much-anticipated test of support for Bongo, whose detractors say has done too little to funnel Gabon’s oil wealth towards the third of its 2.3 million population living in poverty and question his fitness to govern after a stroke in 2018.

Bongo has sought to disprove this image on a wide-ranging campaign trail. He has promised to create more jobs, boost micro-loan programmes and cut public school fees.

“We are voting and we are winning,” he said in an online post on Saturday, sharing a video of his supporters wearing T-shirts with his campaign slogan “Ali for Everyone”.

The run-up to the election has been smooth, but many fear the post-election period could see turmoil like the protests that broke out after Bongo’s 2016 victory. The opposition has disputed both his previous election wins, saying he won fraudulently.

“I am perfectly informed about the fraud orchestrated by Ali Bongo and his supporters,” Ondo Ossa told reporters at the polling station at Ba Oumar High School, in Libreville, without detailing the exact allegations.

“Ali Bongo still has time to negotiate. The only negotiation that is necessary is his departure; 60 years in power is too much,” he said.

In online posts, his opposition alliance Alternance 2023 and Bongo’s spokesperson said some polling stations had not received ballot slips for their respective candidates. Reuters could not independently verify the claims.

Bongo’s team rejected allegations of fraud.

“The vote hasn’t even finished yet, and already the opposition is losing its nerve and its composure. This attempt to sow discord, because defeat is near, will not work,” Bongo’s spokesperson said in an online post.

Recent changes to the voting system could further complicate the aftermath, said Remadji Hoinathy, a researcher at the Africa-focused Institute for Security Studies. These include the introduction of a ballot that requires voters to pick a presidential candidate and lawmaker from the same party.

The opposition has also voiced concern about a recent constitutional change to abolish two rounds of voting for the president.

The changes “might add more tensions on the outcome of the elections, and then maybe contestations and maybe violence,” Hoinathy said.

Bongo’s camp has positioned him as the firm favourite to win the race, although there has been no reliable polling.

His main threat comes from Ondo Ossa, an economics and management professor who has campaigned on the need for change and better economic opportunities.

The pitch could resonate in a country where one in three young people are unemployed and the vast majority of the population has only known Bongo’s rule.

Source: Reuters

Niger’s coup leaders have formed a new government, according to the country’s new strongman, General Abdourahamane Tiani, who read out a statement on national television on Wednesday night.

The 21-member government, announced just before an emergency summit of Niger’s West African neighbours in Abuja on Thursday, is headed by Prime Minister Ali Mahaman Lamine Zeine and includes 20 ministers, including the defence and interior ministers.

The United Nations chief on Wednesday expressed grave concern over what he called the “deplorable” conditions of Niger leader Mohamed Bazoum’s detainment and called for his release.

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres denounced “the deplorable living conditions that President Bazoum and his family are reported to be living under”, according to a UN statement.

CNN reported Wednesday that Bazoum was being kept isolated and forced to eat dry rice and pasta by the rebels who overthrew him in a coup late last month.

In a series of text messages Bazoum sent to a friend, the president said he had been “deprived of all human contact since Friday”, with no one supplying him food or medicine, the network reported.

Source: France 24

Despite mounting international pressure for the Niger’s ruling junta to step down its decision to name a new prime minister is an indication that the military is already holding on to leadership in the West African country.

“They are cementing their grip on power… they are trying to send a message that they are creating a government around them[sevles].”

Niger informed ECOWAS that it cannot host a delegation from the West African regional bloc, citing reasons of security due to what it characterised as widespread anger among the Nigerien population following sanctions imposed by the bloc.

“The current context of anger and revolt among the population following the sanctions imposed by ECOWAS makes it impossible to welcome this delegation in the required serenity and security,” Niger’s foreign affairs ministry wrote in a letter addressed to the ECOWAS representation in Niamey.

Culled from France 24

France is suspending development aid and budgetary assistance to Burkina Faso, its foreign ministry announced Sunday.

The statement comes days after Burkina Faso and Mali announced that they would consider any military intervention against the new military rulers in Niger as a “declaration of war”.

The West African bloc ECOWAS last Sunday issued Niger’s new rulers with an ultimatum to hand back power to the democratically elected President Mohamed Bazoum within the week or face possible military intervention.

France’s foreign ministry said on Saturday that it “firmly and resolutely” backed efforts by ECOWAS to reinstate Bazoum.

Source: AFP

General Abdourahamane Tchiani is the new leader of Niger following a military takeover, state television reported Friday, two days after the country’s president was detained by members of his own guard.

Tchiani, the head of the Presidential Guard, has been named “president of the National Council for the Safeguard of the Homeland,” a statement said.

Appearing on state television, the general said soldiers had seized power to the deteriorating security situation in the Sahel country.

The country’s elected president, Mohamed Bazoum, has been detained by the putschists since Wednesday morning.

Earlier on Friday, French President Emmanuel Macron described the coup as “dangerous” for the region as Western powers scramble to preserve a key ally in the insurgent-stricken Sahel.

“This coup is completely illegitimate and profoundly dangerous, for Nigeriens, for Niger and for the whole region,” Macron said.

Macron said he had spoken to Bazoum, who is being held in his palace, and called for him to be reinstated.

Niger’s government had been seen by many in the international community as a bulwark against Islamist militancy in a vast, arid region that is beset by security challenges.

‘Last bastion of democracy in the Sahel’: Uncertainty in Niger prompts concern among allies

French and UN troops were in recent years forced to withdraw from neighbouring Mali, but Paris still has 1,500 soldiers in Niger. Bazoum’s overthrow could put the future of their deployment in doubt.

Macron, speaking during a visit to Papua New Guinea, said it was imperative that the constitutional order be restored and vowed to support regional groupings like ECOWAS in mediation or sanctions against putschists.

Source: Reuters