Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo (born 5 June 1942) is an Equatoguinean politician, former military officer, and dictator who has served as the second president of Equatorial Guinea since 1979. As of 2026, he is the second-longest-consecutively-serving current non-royal national leader in the world, second to Paul Biya of Cameroon.
After graduating from military school in Zaragoza, Spain, Obiang held multiple positions under the presidency of his uncle, Francisco Macías Nguema, including director of the Black Beach prison notorious for its human rights violations. He ousted Macías in a military coup in 1979 and took control of the country as president and chairman of the Supreme Military Council. The country nominally returned to civilian rule in 1982, and in 1987 Obiang founded the Democratic Party of Equatorial Guinea (PDGE), which was the country's sole legal party until 1992. He has overseen Equatorial Guinea's emergence as an important oil producer, beginning in the 1990s. Obiang was Chairperson of the African Union from 2011 to 2012.
Obiang is widely regarded as an autocratic leader who leads a regime of widespread corruption, abuse of power, human rights violations, and nepotism. Under his rule, Equatorial Guinea continues to have one of the worst human rights records in the world. Equatorial Guinea is a dominant-party state, in which Obiang's PDGE holds virtually all governing power and has held all or almost all seats in the legislature since its creation. The constitution gives Obiang sweeping powers, including the right to rule by decree, effectively making his government a corrupt dictatorship and banana republic. He has also placed family members in key government positions.
From a family of the Esangui ethnic clan, Obiang was born on 5 June 1942 in the town of Akoacám (Mongomo district, Wele-Nzas province), belonging to the continental region of the colony of Spanish Guinea on the present-day border with Gabon. Obiang was the third of ten sons born to the Gabonese Santiago Nguema Eneme Obama, among whom are also the National Security Delegate Armengol Ondo Nguema and former National Defense Minister Antonio Mba Nguema. Obiang's parents emigrated from Gabon to avoid paying capitation taxes and take advantage of Spanish Guinea's good economic situation. After María Mbasogo Ngui died, Obiang and his brothers were raised by his father and his new wife, Carmen Mikue Mbira.
Obiang completed his first studies at the Cardenal Cisneros School Group in Ebibeyin and the La Salle Center in Bata (now the Enrique Nvo Okenve National College), where he obtained a degree in labor administration.
After Macías ordered the murders of several members of the family they shared, including Obiang's brother, Obiang and others in Macías's inner circle feared he had gone insane. Obiang overthrew Macías on 3 August 1979 in a bloody coup d'état and put him on trial for his actions, including the genocide of the Bubi people, over the previous decade. Macías was sentenced to death and executed by firing squad on 29 September 1979. A new Moroccan presidential guard was required to form the firing squad, because local soldiers feared his alleged magical powers.
Obiang declared that the new government would make a fresh start from Macías's brutal and repressive régime. He granted amnesty to political prisoners, and ended the previous régime's system of forced labor. He also reversed the previous régime's most repressive measures, reversing its bans on glasses and Christianity. But he made virtually no mention of his own role in the Macías régime's atrocities.
The country nominally returned to civilian rule in 1982, with the enactment of a slightly less authoritarian constitution. At the same time, Obiang was elected unopposed to a seven-year term as president. He was sworn in on 12 October, the 14th anniversary of the country's independence from Spain. He was reelected in 1989, again unopposed. After other parties were nominally allowed to organize in 1992, he was reelected in 1996 and 2002 with 98% of the vote in elections international observers condemned as fraudulent. In 2002, at least one voting district was recorded as giving Obiang 103% of the vote.
Obiang was elected to a fourth term in 2009 with 97% of the vote, again amid accusations of voter fraud and intimidation, beating opposition leader Plácido Micó Abogo.
According to most domestic and international observers, Obiang leads one of the world's most corrupt, ethnocentric, and repressive regimes. Equatorial Guinea is essentially a one-party state dominated by Obiang's Democratic Party of Equatorial Guinea (PDGE). The constitution grants Obiang sweeping powers, including the power to rule by decree.
Although opposition parties were de jure legalized in 1992, the legislature is dominated by the PDGE and there is no substantive opposition to executive decisions. There have never been more than eight opposition deputies in the lower house, while the PDGE has held every seat in the Senate since its inception in 2013.
A 2006 article in Der Spiegel quoted Obiang as asking, "What right does the opposition have to criticize the actions of a government?" Free press is severely restricted in the country. There are few private newspapers and almost all mass media is either state-owned or owned by Obiang's son, Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue.
In 2013, Obiang attended the funerals of Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez and South African president Nelson Mandela. In 2014, he was the only foreign head of state at the funeral of former Spanish prime minister Adolfo Suárez.
Equatorial Guinea's relations with the United States cooled in 1993, after US Ambassador John E. Bennett was accused of practicing witchcraft at the graves of 10 British airmen who were killed when their plane crashed there during World War II. Bennett left after receiving a death threat at the U.S. Embassy in Malabo in 1994. In his farewell address, he publicly named the government's most notorious torturers, including Equatorial Guinea's Minister of National Security, Manuel Nguema Mba, another Obiang uncle. No new envoy was appointed, and the embassy closed in 1996, leaving its affairs to be handled by the embassy in Cameroon.
Things turned around for the Obiang regime after the September 11 attacks, after which the United States re-prioritized its dealings with African states. The Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies, a neoconservative Israeli-based think tank, sponsored a forum on 15 May 2006, at which Assistant Secretary of State for Africa Walter H. Kansteiner said, "African oil is of national strategic interest to us, and it will increase and become more important as we move forward."
In a lengthy state visit from March to April 2006, Obiang sought to reopen the closed embassy in the US, saying that "the lack of a U.S. diplomatic presence is definitely holding back economic growth." Obiang was warmly greeted by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who called him a "good friend".
Public relations company Cassidy & Associates may have been partially responsible for the change in tone between Obiang and the US government. From 2004 to 2010, Obiang's government employed Cassidy at a rate of at least $120,000 a month.
But by October 2006, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee had raised concerns about the proposal to build the new embassy on land owned by Obiang, whom the United Nations Commission on Human Rights accused of directly overseeing the torture of opponents. The new embassy chancery opened in 2013.