GABONESE president Ali Bongo has been discovered to a Nigerian of Igbo extraction who was one of the numerous orphans sent to the country during the Biafran war and was adopted by the then president Omar Bongo.

 During the Nigerian Civil War which took place between 1967 and 1970, Gabon was one of the few African countries that backed Biafra and took in thousands of Igbo children, most of whom were orphans. According to findings just revealed by a court in Nantes in western France, President Bongo was one of such kids.

 Members of President Bongo's family had gone to court asking to view his birth certificate after accusations that he lied about where he was born. With next year’s presidential elections approaching, controversy has been brewing over President Bongo’s place of birth with critics saying he falsified his birth certificate to hide the fact that he was adopted from another country.

 If the allegations prove true, it could prevent him from running for another term and cost him his wealth. Yesterday, a court in Nantes in France allowed 25-year-old Onaida Maisha Bongo Ondimba, a daughter of former president Omar Bongo, to view the documents in full.

 President Ali Bongo is the only one of ex-president Omar Bongo’s 54 declared heirs not to have produced the identification documents. Ali Bongo assumed the presidency following the 2009 death of his father Omar Bongo, who had presided over the country and its oil and mineral wealth since 1967. 

Gabon's 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. President Bongo himself claims he was born in Brazzaville, the former capital of French Equatorial Africa in 1959. 

Nantes' civil registration centre is responsible for all birth certificates of people born in French Equatorial Africa up to 1960, when the former colonial countries in the region gained independence to become Gabon, Congo, Chad and the Central African Republic. In August, President Bongo said he would give all his share of the inheritance from his father to the Gabonese youth in a speech marking the 55th anniversary of independence.