Bongo, Known For Amassing Ill Fortune, Dies

Although Gabon is an oil-producing wealthy country, many segments of this nation situated in the Gulf of Guinea don´t profit by the oil revenue.

[Global: Africa Commentary]

It´s now official: President Albert Bernard Bongo, commonly known as Omar Bongo Ondimba has been dispatched to the Great Beyond. He had cancer of the bowels.

The man who received the highest office of Gabon, an oil-rich country south of Cameroon, in the Gulf of Guinea, 42 years ago, died June 7, 2009, at the age of 73 in a Spanish hospital in Barcelona.

After the recent death of his latest wife, Edith Bongo, who was daughter of Congo-Brazzaville’s president Denis Sassou Nguesso, “The Dean of African Heads of State” withdrew from the public spotlight. His associates and co-laborers purported that he was just taking a break after bereavement.

They later argued that the panjandrum of Equatorial Africa was intent on flying to Europe for a medical check-up.

Mr. Bongo liked crowing about his inferiority complex towards France and the shady ties between French-speaking Africa and France. That´s why he would now and then state: “Africa without France is like a car without driver; France without Africa is similar to a car without fuel.”

He could even sway the French authorities to such an extent that Jean-Marie Bockel, once France´s Deputy Secretary to the French-speaking world, was sacked at President Bongo’s prompting. In effect, Mr. Bockel was willing to put the kibosh on the dubious ties and hanky-panky between some African French-speaking officials and French politicians and business people.

But when some associations and justice officers in Paris initiated legal proceedings against Mr Bongo for having siphoned off money from the Gabonese public purse in order to purchase several houses and private mansions in Paris, and mainly when nine of his bank accounts were frozen in France on grounds of peculation, Gabonese high-ranking officials called for the overhauling of cooperation agreements between Gabon and France.

This probably caused one district attorney in France to drop the legal proceedings against the epitome of the skulduggery between many French politicians and business people and many African French-speaking rulers, officials, scholars and graduates among others.

Some analysts deem that President Bongo´s rule was characterized by nepotism and clientelism. His daughter Pascaline Bongo is Director of the President´s Office while his son Ali Bongo Ondimba is Defense Secretary. Ali Bongo Ondimba may succeed his father.

Although Gabon is an oil-producing wealthy country, many segments of this nation situated in the Gulf of Guinea don´t profit by the oil revenue. The panjandrum of Equatorial Africa every now and then held the view that there’re have-nots in all countries, so nobody ought to nettle him about needy and poor people in Gabon notwithstanding his country´s wealth.

By the way, most countries located in the Gulf of Guinea do produce oil. Countries such as Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, Cameroon and Nigeria export oil, natural gas, or both. Many segments of the populaces of these countries live in poverty because these nations are more often than not improperly administered and their economies inefficiently managed.

Some officials of these African French-speaking countries are always ready to brag about having attended “Higher Schools of Public Administration”. But any scholar who draws upon his knowledge in the “Science of Public Administration” pioneered and propounded by U.S. president Thomas Woodrow Wilson, and attempts to evaluate the achievements of many of this officials, will wise up to the fact that many of them are backward as regards “Public Administration”.

The remit of public administrators is to bring about the moral development and the economic fulfilment of their peoples. With regard to the management of private organizations, these graduates and scholars also evince shortcomings. The fact that they usually ruin the public utilities and corporations they manage provides proof enough that they have never understood this lesson of Management Accounting: “The certainties of yesterday can become the absurdities of today.”

Indeed, diseconomy and neglect make up a way of life and the hallmark of most French-speaking countries in Africa – including Cameroon, a bilingual country.

Cameroon, a neighboring country of Gabon even owns other natural and mineral resources such as the forest, rivers, bauxite, cocoa, coffee, citrus and tropical fruits, cotton, cobalt, nickel, gas and diamond, the reserves of which have been recently discovered .

Incidentally, the South-Koreans who found out those diamond reserves argue that Cameroon’s got the largest diamond reserves in the world, just as it’s been latterly reported that Uganda´s oil reserves at least rival those of Saudi Arabia.

Now then, anybody who’s schooled in “Strategic Studies” know that oil and/or gas will continue to remain the sinews and linchpin of each economy world-wide at least for the next four decades.

The proceeds springing from exporting raw materials are seldom reinvested in diverse lines so as to create more corporations, companies, jobs; in addition, they are scarcely plowed in education in order  to provide students and professors at all levels with latter-day and cutting-edge learning and teaching equipment and environment.

The funds more often than not benefit in many cases those who belong to secret and discreet secular religions or Mephistophelian cults. They splurge this dough on luxury goods, commodities and belongings.

Many African French-speaking officials, scholars, and students are co-opted onto these imported discreet secular religions and/or initiated into these secret Mephistophelean cults.

These religions and cults enhance – to the detriment of hard work and dedication to spreading wealth – cronyism, dullness, hot air, embezzlement of public funds, deviant and errant practices such as buggery and debauchery, spreading HIV/Aids in the process. They also further fealty to the fiend.

Now then, buggery is strictly prohibited in classic African world-views; it´s regarded and referred to as “the terrible and noxious evil” by some African peoples.

The secular religions and Mephistophelian cults are regularly used by non-African public and private business players and officials as channels to brainwash and play for suckers African rulers and officials – whom they put down as patsies who demand only peanuts for Africa´s precious resources – in order to have access to African resources, to relieve Africa of those resources, so as to support and improve the living conditions of their own peoples – leaving African populaces rot in poverty.

Some media outlets of the North usually cover up for a suchlike exploitation, and don´t report on it. They never tell their peoples that they depend on African resources.

President Bongo´s style and way epitomizes and provides a glimpse of the objectionable administration and management of many rich nations in Africa. Will the Gabonese contrive to successfully turn over a brighter new leaf? 

Anyway, the opportunity´s presented itself this time around.

“The Black Star News”´s columnist and news analyst Mathias Victorien Ntep is a PhD researcher at the Goethe-University of Frankfurt, Germany, and at the Leiden University, Netherlands.

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