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Omar Bongo [1]

['Gavin Mairs', 'David Axe', 'Martin Evans', 'Our Foreign Staff', 'Dominic Penna', 'Maighna Nanu']

Date: 2009-06-08 18:49:00+00:00

Bongo amassed enough wealth to become one of the world's richest men. His great political achievement was to ensure that the revenues from Gabon's 2.5 billion barrels of oil reserves guaranteed his grip on power. He carefully allowed just enough oil money to trickle down to the general population of 1.4 million, thus avoiding any serious unrest. Meanwhile, he offered his domestic critics a bargain they could not refuse: drop your opposition in return for a modest but glittering slice of the nation's oil wealth. By this method, he bought off every opponent and became the most successful of all Africa's francophone tyrants, comfortably extending his political dominance into a fifth decade.

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[1] Url: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/politics-obituaries/5478816/Omar-Bongo.html;

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