Gabon's President Ali Bongo has narrowly won a second term in office, taking 49.80 of the vote against 48.23 percent for his rival Jean Ping, Interior Minister Pacome Moubelet-Boubeya said Wednesday.

Bongo won by a narrow 5,594 votes of a total 627,805 registered voters. Turnout was 59.46 percent nationwide but soared to 99.93 percent in one of the country's nine provinces -- the Haut-Ogooue, heartland of Bongo's Teke ethnic group -- in a result hotly contested by the opposition.