Coup: African Union meets over Gabon’s situation

The African Union’s Peace and Security Council said it was holding a meeting on Thursday (today) on the military coup in Gabon.

According to Al Jazeera, the leaders are looking at how to respond to officers who removed President Ali Bango and installed their own head of state in the latest of a wave of coups in West and Central Africa that regional powers have failed to reverse.

“Now – AU Peace & Security Council meets to consider the situation in Gabon,” the AU body said in a statement on X, formerly Twitter.

It said the meeting was being chaired by the AU commissioner for political affairs, Bankole Adeoye of Nigeria, and the current holder of the council’s rotating chair, Burundi’s Willy Nyamitwe.

The takeover ended the Bongo family’s almost six decades in power and created a new conundrum for a region that has struggled to deal with eight coups since 2020.

Nigeria’s recently elected president called it a “contagion of autocracy”.

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