Teodoro Obiang Nguema has never received less than 97 percent of the vote in an election. On Monday, with partial results indicating that 99.2 percent of the vote has gone in his favor, Equatorial Guinea’s leader was surely all set for another seven years in a seat that has no doubt molded to his figure.
One-sixth of African countries including Uganda have an executive who has been in power for more than 20 years — that’s nine out of 54. Obiang, who took power nearly 37 years ago in a bloody coup, is in the company of Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe (who turned 92 in February), Isaias Afwerki of Eritrea and King Mswati III of Swaziland. But Obiang is most similar to — and most closely followed in terms of the number of years in office by — José Eduardo dos Santos of Angola.
Dos Santos and Obiang preside over Africa’s No. 2 and 3 crude-oil producers, respectively, and are accused of embezzling much of the resulting wealth, while not distributing it fairly, if at all, to their citizens. Equatorial Guinea, once a Spanish colony, has the biggest gap of any country worldwide between its per-capita wealth and its human development index — a sure sign that there are a few outliers skewing the per-capita figure way upward.
Catherine Eye 