President Ali Bongo Ondimba of Gabon is a Nigerian of the ethnic Igbo
stock, adopted by a former leader of the country during the Biafran
war.This startling revelation is about to be revealed as a court in
western France Thursday allowed a family member of Ali Bongo Ondimba to
view the birth certificate of the
leader after accusations that he lied about where he was born.
With next year’s presidential elections approaching, controversy has
been brewing over Ali Bongo’s place of birth with critics saying he
falsified his birth certificate to hide the fact that he was adopted
from another country.
If the allegations prove true, it could keep him from running for another term and cost him his wealth.
The court in Nantes allowed 25-year-old Onaida Maisha Bongo Ondimba, a
daughter of former president Omar Bongo, to view the documents in full.
Her lawyer Eric Moutet hailed the decision as “enormous”, though “diplomatically complex”.
Ali Bongo is the only one of ex-president Omar Bongo’s 54 declared heirs not to have produced the identification documents.
Ali Bongo assumed the presidency following the 2009 death of his father
Omar Bongo, who had presided over the west African nation and its oil
and mineral wealth since 1967.
The Gabonese constitution says one must be born Gabonese to serve as the
head of state, but French investigative journalist Pierre Pean alleged
in a recent book that the president was actually Nigerian and was
adopted during the Biafran war in the late 1960s.
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