Meet the president who wants new term after 36 years in office

After 36 years in power, Africa’s longest-serving ruler Equatorial Guinea President Teodoro Obiang Nguema, plans to run for a new seven-year term in the oil-rich country with an abysmal rights record.

Speaking on national radio Tuesday evening, the 73-year-old who initially took office in an August 1979 coup, announced he had won the support of the ruling party to run for a fresh mandate in 2016. No date has yet been set for the election.

His Democratic Party of Equatorial Guinea (PDGE) won 99 of 100 parliamentary seats in the last 2008 general elections while Obiang took over 95 percent of the vote in the 2009 presidential poll.

He is one of eight African leaders who have been in office for more than a quarter-century, and one of two to have ruled since 1979 along with Angola’s Jose Eduardo Dos Santos, who was elected in September that year.