Bongo headed the single-party regime of the Gabonese Democratic Party (PDG) until 1990, when, faced with public pressure, he was forced to introduce multi-party politics into Gabon.

The youngest of twelve siblings, Albert-Bernard Bongo was born on 30 January 1935 in Lewai (since renamed Bongoville), French Equatorial Africa, a town of the Haut-Ogooué province in what is now southeastern Gabon near the border with the Republic of the Congo.

Following a Congress of the PDG in January 1979 and the December 1979 elections, Bongo gave up some of his ministerial portfolios[14] and surrendered his functions as head of government to Prime Minister Mebiame.

This moderate opposition group sponsored demonstrations by students and academic staff at the Université Omar Bongo in Libreville in December 1981, when the university was temporarily closed.

The next day, 23 May 1990, a vocal critic of Bongo and the leading political opposition leader, Joseph Rendjambe [fr], was found dead in a hotel, reportedly murdered by poison.

[15] The death of Rendjambe, a prominent business executive and secretary-general of the opposition group Parti gabonais du progres (PGP), touched off the worst rioting in Bongo's 23-year rule.

[18] Bongo was eventually successful in consolidating power again, with most of the major opposition leaders being either co-opted by being given high-ranking posts in the government or bought off, ensuring his comfortable re-election in 1998.

[29] In 2008, President Nicolas Sarkozy demoted his minister in charge of looking after the ex-colonies, Jean-Marie Bockel, after the latter noted the "squandering of public funds" by some African regimes, provoking Bongo's fury.

[30]After Bongo's demise, President Sarkozy expressed his "sadness and emotion" ... and pledged that France would remain "loyal to its long relationship of friendship" with Gabon.

[26] Italian fashion designer Francesco Smalto admitted providing Bongo with Parisian prostitutes to secure a tailoring business worth $600,000 per year.

As of June 2007, Bongo, along with President Denis Sassou Nguesso of the Republic of the Congo, Blaise Compaoré of Burkina Faso, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea and José Eduardo dos Santos from Angola was being investigated by the French magistrates after the complaint made by French NGOs Survie and Sherpa due to claims that he has used millions of pounds of embezzled public funds to acquire lavish properties in France.

The firm's partners are two of Bongo's children, Omar, 13, and Yacine, 16, his wife Edith and one of her nephews... [T]he residence is the most expensive in his portfolio, which includes nine other properties in Paris, four of which are on the exclusive Avenue Foch, near the Arc de Triomphe.

In a separate French investigation into corruption at the former oil giant Elf Aquitaine, an executive testified that it paid Bongo £40m a year via Swiss bank accounts in exchange for permission to exploit his country's reserves.

The latest inquiry, by the French antifraud agency OCRGDF, followed a lawsuit that accused Bongo and two other African leaders of looting public funds to finance their purchases.

'Whatever the merits and qualifications of these leaders, no one can seriously believe that these assets were paid for out of their salaries', alleges the lawsuit brought by the Sherpa association of judges, which promotes corporate social responsibility.

A French court decision in February 2009 to freeze his bank accounts added fuel to the fire and his government accused France of waging a "campaign to destabilize" the country.

But his diminutive height belied his towering stature: on Gabon's political stage – which he ruled shrewdly for nearly 42 years -; and on the African continent, as one of the last of the so-called "big men".

Bongo went on to preside over an oil boom that undoubtedly fuelled an extravagant lifestyle for him and his family—dozens of luxurious properties in and around France, a US$800 million presidential palace in Gabon, fancy cars, etc.

[43] He built some basic infrastructure in Libreville and, ignoring advice to establish a road network instead, constructed the US$4 billion Trans-Gabon Railway line deep into the forested interior.

[44] Bongo used part of the money to build up a fairly large circle of people who supported him such as government ministers, high administrators, and army officers.

[40] When multi-party presidential elections were held in 1993, which he won, the poll was marred by allegations of rigging, with the opposition claiming that chief rival, Father Paul Mba Abessole, was robbed of victory.

Determined to prove that he was not a dictator who relied on brute force for his political survival, Bongo entered into talks with the opposition, negotiating what became known as the Paris Agreement.

Mamboundou called for a boycott of the legislative elections held in December 2001, and his supporters burned ballot boxes and papers in a polling station in his hometown of Ndende.

[27]According to the political scientist Thomas Atenga, despite the large oil revenues, "the Gabonese rentier state has functioned for years on the predation of resources for the benefit of its ruling class, around which a parasitic capitalism has developed that has hardly improved the living conditions of the population".

[51] The Gabonese government maintained that he was in Spain for a few days of rest following the "intense emotional shock" of his wife's death, but eventually admitted that he was in a Spanish clinic "undergoing a medical check-up".

His death was eventually confirmed by Gabonese Prime Minister Jean Eyeghe Ndong, who said in a written statement that Bongo had died of a heart attack shortly before 12:30 GMT on 8 June 2009.

[30] Bongo's body was then flown to Franceville, the main town in the southeastern province of Haut-Ogooue, where he was born, where he was buried in a private family burial on 18 June 2009.

In 2004, The New York Times reported that:Peru is investigating claims that a beauty pageant contestant was lured to Gabon to become the lover of its 67-year-old president, Omar Bongo, and was stranded for nearly two weeks after she refused.

In an interview, Ms. Santa Maria said that she was taken to Mr. Bongo's presidential palace hours after her Jan. 19 arrival and that as he joined her, he pressed a button and some sliding doors opened, revealing a large bed.

and Stiggs - in which the irreverent title characters, who admire Bongo, phone the seemingly amused Gabonese leader to recount their "utterly monstrous, mind-roasting summer.