On Wednesday, Gabon's President Ali Bongo Ondimba urged people to speak out following the coup d'état perpetrated earlier in the day by a group of military officers who dissolved government institutions and annulled general elections.
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"I send a message to all our friends around the world to tell them to make some noise," said the president, from where he assured that it is his home, in a video broadcast on social networks.
"My son is somewhere, my wife is somewhere else, and I am in the residence and nothing is happening, I don't know what is going on," he added.
The military reported after executing the coup that Bongo's son and close advisor, Noureddin Bongo Valentin, was arrested for "high treason" along with six other young members of the professional entourage close to the still head of state.
Bongo Ondimba, 64, has been in office since 2009 following the death of his progenitor, Omar Bongo, who ruled the African nation for 41 years uninterruptedly.
The destabilizing action of the military sector comes after the electoral authority confirmed Bongo's reelection with 64.27 percent of the votes after last Saturday's elections.
The self-styled "Committee for the Transition and the Restoration of the Institutions" affirmed that it executed the coup action with the aim of putting an end to the "continuous deterioration of social cohesion, which risks leading the country to chaos."