"LE GABON ENERVANT" OR "ANNOYING GABON"

 

English version  Dear readers, when a Transport Minister compares the halting of public construction projects to the normal construction of a house by an ordinary citizen, this can seem quite unserious and even like minimizing a structural problem rather than taking responsibility for it. A State has planning, financing, and monitoring resources that an individual building their own house does not have. The comparison therefore seems to us more than misplaced. The technical reasons repeatedly invoked for halting public construction projects raise questions about budget management, tender processes, and coordination between ministries. These are symptoms of the same old poor governance. The Gabonese context, with infrastructure projects dragging on for years, makes this kind of discourse harder for us to accept. A responsible State facing halts in public construction projects should get ahead of the situation and announce the halts before they become visible or a source of controver...

English version  A magistrate outside the ordinary hierarchy and a doctor of law from the University of Paris-Panthéon-Assas, Eddy Narcisse Minang served at the Franceville court before joining the one in Libreville, where he held the position of Attorney General at the Libreville Judicial Court of Appeal. He was one of the central figures in the historic trial of Sylvia Bongo Ondimba and her son Noureddin Bongo Valentin, tried in absentia in Libreville in November 2025 for embezzlement of public funds, corruption, money laundering, and criminal conspiracy. The Attorney General sought twenty years of imprisonment for each of the two defendants, along with a fine of 100 million CFA francs and the confiscation, to the benefit of the State, of all their assets, bank accounts, private mansions, oil and mining assets, and about fifty companies, as well as repayment of 4.4 billion CFA francs to the Public Treasury. According to him, Sylvia and Noureddin Bongo formed "a mother-son duo wh...