What the rest of the world sees as a sex tape scandal could in fact be the latest episode in the real-life drama over who will become Equatorial Guinea’s next president, the BBC reports.
Over the past fortnight, dozens of videos – estimates range from 150 to more than 400 – have been leaked of a senior civil servant having sex in his office and elsewhere with different women.
They have flooded social media, shocking and titillating people in the small central African country and beyond.
Many of the women filmed were wives and relatives of people close to the center of power.
It appears some were aware they were being filmed having sex with Baltasar Ebang Mr Engonga, who is also known as “Bello” because of his good looks.
All this is hard to verify as Equatorial Guinea is a highly restricted society where a free press does not exist. But one theory is that the leaks were a way to discredit the man at the center of the storm.
Engonga is a nephew of President Teodoro Obiang Nguema and one of those thought to be hoping to replace him. Obiang is the world’s longest-serving president, having been in power since 1979.
The 82-year-old has overseen an economic boom that has turned to bust as a result of the now-dwindling oil reserves.
There is a small, extremely wealthy elite, but many of the 1.7 million people in the country live in poverty. It has also had its fair share of scandals – including the revelations about the lavish lifestyle of one of the president’s sons, now vice-president, who once owned a $275,000 (£210,000) crystal-encrusted glove worn by Michael Jackson.
The videos center of the current scandal are believed to have originally appeared one-by-one a few days earlier on Telegram, on one of the platform’s channels known for publishing pornographic images.
They were then downloaded onto people’s phones and shared among WhatsApp groups in Equatorial Guinea, where they caused a storm.
Engonga was quickly identified along with some of the women in the videos, including relatives of the president and wives to ministers and senior military officials.
The government was unable to ignore what was going on and on 30 October Vice-President Teodoro Obiang Mangue (once owner of the Michael Jackson glove) gave telecoms companies 24 hours to come up with ways to stop the spread of the clips.
“We cannot continue to watch families fall apart without taking any action,” he wrote on X.
“In the meantime, the origin of these publications is being investigated to find the author or authors and make them answer for their actions.”
As the computer equipment was in the hands of the security forces, suspicion has fallen on someone there, who, perhaps, sought to trash Engonga’s reputation ahead of a trial.
The police have called on women to come forward to open a case against Engonga for the non-consensual sharing of intimate images. One has already announced that she is suing him.
What is not clear is why Engonga made the recordings. But activists have put forward what could be other motives behind the explosive leak.
As well as being related to the president, Engonga is the son of Baltasar Engonga Edjo’o, the head of the regional economic and monetary union, Cemac, and very influential in the country.
“What we are seeing is the end of an era, the end of the current president, and there is a succession [question] and this is the internal fighting we are seeing,” said Equatoguinean activist Nsang Christia Esimi Cruz, now living in London.
Speaking to the BBC Focus on Africa podcast, he alleged that Vice-President Obiang was trying to politically eliminate “anyone who could challenge his succession”.
The vice-president, along with his mother, are suspected to be pushing aside anyone who threatens his path to the presidency, including Gabriel Obiang Lima (another son of President Obiang from a different wife), who was oil minister for 10 years and then moved to a secondary government role.
Credit: BBC
