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| Francisco Macias Nguema |
Guineans believed their first president had supernatural powers. Using the knowledge of witchcraft he inherited from his sorcerer father, President Francisco Macias Nguema built a huge collection of human skulls at his homestead to beat his subjects to submission.
Surrounded by village elders at his state house, Nguema used a bamboo hut as the state pharmaceutical and treasury after closing the central bank. Most of the money rotted on the ground while citizens suffered in subject poverty.
Nguema was favored by the Spanish colonialist as the president on Independence Day, 0ctorber 1968 because of his limited education and mental ability. In favor of a trustworthy collaborator the Spaniards made him a mayor through a civil service test which had failed thrice.
The Spanish plan backfired.
Due to his education inability Nguema had a phobia for intellectuals. 154 days after independence when he found Spanish flags still flying in some parts of Equatorial Guinea he lashed out.
Nguema instructed youths and vigilante groups to attack colonialist. 7,000 Spaniards left, mostly civil servants, left en masse.
Their vacant positions were filled by fellow tribesmen of Esangui. Most notable was his nephew, Colonel Teadore Obiang Nguema Mbosogo; the commander of National Guard, military commander of Fernando Po, a province, and the secretary-general of ministry of defense and head of prisons.
When his foreign minister, Ndongo Miyone, tried to diffuse the tension he was brutally murdered for being too ‘intellectual’ for Nguema liking.
A director of statistics had his body dismembered to ‘help him learn how to count when he gave figures which displeased the president.
A central bank director was executed when he controlled Nguema from plundering the state coffers. Consequently all foreign currency went to his house where he placed the state treasury for his personal use. Civil servants and military salaries always ran long overdue.
When he ran out of money Nguema kidnapped and ransomed foreigners and notable was the $103,600 ransom for a German woman, a Spaniard professor and a dead soviet citizen.
His execution knew no bounds. All former lovers of his current mistresses were executed. The husbands of women he coveted were equally killed.
His pet subjects were intellectuals, education and foreign culture which he rumbled on incoherently on speeches.
He later banned the word ‘intellectual’ in Equatorial Guinea and closed all libraries in the country. Newspaper and printing press were not spared either, they were all banned.
Ultimately education was abolished in 1974 and children were taught political slogans.
He strove to control organized religion by having his pictorials hanging in every church and had himself proclaimed as ‘the only miracle’. Under threat of immediate arrest priests were forced to recite slogans lie;
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| During his sentencing |
“There is no God other than Macias.”
“God created Equatorial Guinea, thanks to Papa Macias. Without Macias, Equatorial Guinea would not exist.”
Nguema was comfortably satisfied when through citations on 1974-75 he banned religious meetings, funerals and sermons. All Christian names were abolished. He turned churches to warehouses. He stored state weapons in a cathedral at Malabo, the capital city.
Nguema’s demise came in 1979 when his ambitious nephew colonel Obiang Nguema feared he could go down with the when he started showing overt madness.
Nguema smoked bhang and a local stimulant, Iboga. He started hallucinating and having monologues with his dead victims. Due to old age he turned deaf. On September 1979 alongside his five most brutal aides Nguema was sentenced to death by firing squad at Malabo’s Blabich Prison.
For fear of supernatural powers, the Guineans hired Moroccan soldiers to shoot him. To date Francisco Macias Nguema ghost is still potent in Equatorial guineas politics.
