LIBREVILLE – Gabon’s post office has printed 6 000 stamps in 22-carat gold in honour of President Omar Bongo Ondimba, a former postal worker, the head of the national postal service says.
‘These are not inscriptions in gold, but really the image itself that is entirely in gold,’ said Alfred Mabicka, quoted in the L’Union newspaper yesterday as he unveiled the stamps commemorating Bongo’s 41st anniversary in power.
Recalling Bongo’s origins in what was then French Equatorial Africa, the postmaster-general said the president had been ‘a postal worker destined to become a great statesman’. The gold stamps are part of an issue of 37 000 stamps aimed at collectors with a face value of 500 to 5 000 CFA francs (about 75 euro cents to 7.50 euros).
The entire issue cost 26 million CFA francs to print, but the postal service is hoping to reap 50 million CFA francs from their sale.
Bongo, who turned 74 on December 30, is one of Africa’s longest-serving leaders, having come to power in 1967 after the death of Gabon’s founding president Leon M’ba. – Nampa-AFP
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