Gabon: Fresh row over Ali Bongo's real birth place ahead of 2016 polls

Just days after Gabonese president Ali Bongo Ondimba announced he will be running for re-election, the controversy surrounding his legitimate birth place and nationality has bounced back.

His lawyer Claude Dumont-Beghi said “it is time to end the fiction about the parentage of Omar Bongo Ondimba.”

“We must stop this rumor,” Mr. Claude said at a press conference in Paris on Friday, March 4.

These developments come in the wake of attempts by the opponent Myboto to block the candidacy of Ali Bongo Ondimba, according to Jeune Afrique.

Several opponents have filed court suits in Libreville to challenge his candidacy and according to Sahara Reporters, Bongo could be barred from running for another term and could also cost him his wealth, should the allegation prove true.

Reports claim Ali Bongo is the only one of ex-president Omar Bongo’s 54 declared heirs not to have produced identification documents.

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.