Equatorial Guinea leader, President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo yesterday won a sixth term in office, leaving no surprises in an authoritarian country with virtually no political opposition.
Africa Today News, New York reports that the 80-year-old has been in power for over three decades which is actually the longest rule of any leader alive in the world today except monarchs.
While campaigning in 2009, Obiang promised ‘social housing for all’ in the oil-rich central African state.
Obiang planned to provide enough housing to raise Malabo’s shanty towns, including Nubili, a mass of tin-roofed shacks along narrow paths that is home to thousands of families in the heart of the city.
Since, some 20,000 housing projects have sprung up in the country of around 1.5 million residents.
But sitting outside his shack in Nubili, 70-year-old Julio Ondo said none of them appeared to be for people like him.
‘They’ve made fools of the poor,’ he said. I’ve lost all hope of one day living in ‘dignified housing’.
Most people live in poverty in Equatorial Guinea, the World Bank estimates, while wealth is concentrated in the hands of just a few families.
In some parts of Malabo today, lines of identical apartment blocks have sprung up as far as the eye can see, built with the profits of high international oil prices.
Read Also: Two Soldiers Jailed For Deadly Equatorial Guinea Army Blast
In the suburb of Buena Esperanza, some 2,300 small detached homes appeared during the 2010s, supposed to welcome families from Nubili.
But today, shiny four-wheel drives and other expensive cars line the neighbourhood’s streets, appearing to indicate the wealth of its new residents.
The homes are being sold for around $15,500, payable in monthly instalments of $78.
But that is astronomical for many in Nubili.
Plantain farmer Antonio Omecha, 72, is one of many who had hoped the housing plan would allow him to leave a slum plagued with disease and frequent fires.
He said he did receive a housing coupon to go and live in Buena Esperanza.
‘But we had to pay 1.5 million francs (more than $2,350)’ upfront first, he said.
It was impossible on his monthly income of $30.
Equatorial Guinea is the region’s third richest country, with a GDP per capita of $8,462 last year, after the Seychelles and Mauritius, the World Bank says.