General Brice Oligui Nguema has been named as the Next Leader of Gabon by Coup Leaders.

Army troops who took power in Gabon in a coup on Wednesday appointed General Brice Oligui Nguema as the country’s interim leader.

Gen Nguema had earlier been triumphantly paraded through the streets of Libreville by his forces.

Ali Bongo, the deposed president, appeared in a video at his residence, urging his “friends all over the world” to “make noise” on his behalf.

The former French colony is a major oil producer in Africa.

Mr Bongo’s deposition ended his family’s 55-year reign in the Central African state.

Army officers emerged on television in the early hours of Wednesday to declare victory.

They declared the results of Saturday’s election, in which Mr Bongo was declared the winner but the opposition claimed was illegitimate, null and void.

The authorities also stated that one of Mr Bongo’s sons had been arrested for treason.

Within hours, generals convened to debate who would oversee the transition and unanimously agreed to name Gen Nguema, former chief of the presidential guard, as the transitional leader.

According to General Nguema, the Gabonese people had had enough of Ali Bongo’s dictatorship and that he should not have sought for a third term.

“Everyone talks about this, but no one takes responsibility,” he remarked. “So the army decided to turn the page.”

Crowds cheered the army’s statement in Libreville and elsewhere.

The coup, however, was criticized by the United Nations, the African Union, and France, which had close links to the Bongo family.

The US State Department encouraged Gabon’s military to “preserve civilian rule” and “those responsible to release and ensure the safety of government members.” The United Kingdom strongly condemned the “unconstitutional military takeover” of power.

There has long been smoldering animosity of the Bongo family, which controlled Gabon for nearly 56 years, as well as public dissatisfaction with broader issues such as the cost of living.

“At first I was scared, but then I felt joy,” a Libreville resident who asked to remain anonymous told the BBC. “I was scared because I realized I was living through a coup, but I was also happy because we’d been waiting for this regime to fall for so long.”