By Agba Jalingo
Francisco Macias Nguema, took over power on October 12, 1968, as the first President of Equatorial Guinea, after gaining independence from Spain.
On assumption of office, he:
1. Enacted a law that prohibited and prescribed a 30 year jail term for insulting the president or a cabinet minister.
2. Threatening the president became punishable with death by execution.
3. He killed his minister of foreign affairs in 1969 by throwing him out of a window.
4. He took photographs of the dying minister himself and showed them to John Barnes, a Newsweek magazine journalist.
5. He said his country didn’t need electricity in his absence and will compulsorily turn the whole nation into total blackout each time he travels.
6. He killed over 50,000 political opponents and ex-boyfriends and ex-husbands of his numerous mistresses.
7. He got 99 percent “yes” from a referendum and consolidated all legislative, judicial and executive powers in his hands.
8. In 1972, he declared himself the life President of the country and declared a one-party State.
9. He officially prohibited the use of the word “intellectual.”
10. He banned the wearing of eyeglasses and punished wearers with executions.
11. He banned the wearing of western clothes, eating western food, and the use of western medicine.
12. He closed hospitals and advocated for the use of traditional medicine.
13. He banned Christianity and demanded the recitation of “There is no other God than Macias.”
14. He killed his Central Bank Governor, and took the country’s treasury away from Malabo, the nation’s capital, to his ancestral village of Mongomo.
15. His country home was complete with a fortified prison where it was alleged he personally executed some inmates.
16. Cabinet Ministers were directed to personally travel from Malabo to Mongomo, to get funds for the running of their departments. Several did not return alive.
17. His 37-year-old nephew, Teodoro Obiang Nguema, who was the commander of the National Guard, sent six of his men to request money for his unit’s salaries, and the President ordered that they should all be shot.
18. His nephew got infuriated, organized a coup and overthrew his uncle on August 3, 1979. He took over the government in Malabo.
19. After hearing of his overthrow and expected arrest, Macias reportedly set 100 million dollars on fire, and fled his village with another 4 million dollars in his car.
20. He was quickly captured after a woman in the village found him resting under the shade of a tree inside the bush, eating sugarcane.
21. He was tried, found guilty of several crimes and executed at age 55 on September 29, 1979.
22. His nephew who took over has also turned into a brutal dictator that has ruled the country with iron fist since 1979, till date and has appointed his own son as Vice President and successor.
23. Lastly, don’t also forget that, Balthazar Engonga (the fuckative), whose leaked sex tapes showed him sleeping with over 400 women, is also a nephew of the current Equatorial Guinea’s President.
