Togo votes as Gnassingbe seeks to extend family's half-century rule

FILE PHOTO: A billboard of president Faure Gnassingbe, presidential candidate of UNIR (Union for the Republic), is pictured on a street in Lome, Togo, February 19, 2020. REUTERS/Luc Gnago

LOME (Reuters) - Togo votes on Saturday in a presidential election expected to extend incumbent Faure Gnassingbe's 15-year hold on power in the small West African country - and his family's more than half-century dynasty.

Many people in the country of around 8 million say they are fed up with the heavy-handed rule and persistent poverty that have characterised the tenures of Gnassingbe and his father Eyadema Gnassingbe, who seized power in a 1967 coup.