As African dictators go, Omar Bongo was one of the longest-serving. He became the world’s longest-serving ruler when Fidel Castro stepped down in Cuba. He was in power for 41 years.

For all those years, he headed a small African country of Gabon, rich in oil. Yet, his people did not know prosperity nor did they enjoy freedom. Bongo and his cronies stole from Gabon, just like other African dictators. He owned properties all over the world. He built a $500 million presidential palace. He also allowed France to turn Gabon into an extension of its post in Africa.

Unlike other African dictators, Bongo was not particularly brutal. He used the wealth of the nation to buy over opponents. He imported French lifestyle to Gabon and to a large extent succeeded in confusing the Gabonese people with constant flow of wine and good time. With a population of less than 2 million, it was easy for Bongo to maintain calm and tranquility. Gabon was Bongo and Bongo was Gabon, inseparateable.

Bongo agreed to multiparty democracy at the end of the Cold War. He surrounded himself with his son and daughter, who served as Defense Minister and President of the Cabinet, respectively.

He was friendly with French presidents who used the French military to guarantee his grip on Gabon. He love for women, including Italian prostitutes, came into the fore when he muscles Miss Peru into his bedroom during a beauty pageant his country hosted.

I remember Bongo today because he did something else that was admirable to my Igbo people of Nigeria. During the Biafra-Nigeria war, otherwise called the Nigerian civil war, Bongo accepted over 3000 Biafran kids and saved them from starvation that was used as a weapon in that war.

If I were born few years earlier, I could have been one of the 2 million who died from starvation or one of those saved by Bongo.

Bongo made that bold choice when Nigeria and its British partners were blackmailing other nations that had interest in helping the Igbo people of Eastern Nigeria who were surrounded and were being slaughtered.

There were a lot that are good about the worst of us.

President El Hadj Omar Bongo Ondimba converted into Islam in 1973. He lost his second wife in March of 2009. He died yesterday in a Spanish hospital following a heart attack. He was 73 years old.