Ahmadou Ahidjo

Ahmadou Babatoura Ahidjo (24 August 192430 November 1989) was a Cameroonian politician who was the first president of Cameroon, holding the office from 1960 until 1982.

Ahidjo played a major role in Cameroon's independence from France as well as reuniting the French and English-speaking parts of the country.

During Ahidjo's time in office, he established a centralized political system.

In 1932, he began attending local government primary school.

After failing his first school certification examination in 1938, Ahidjo worked for a few months in the veterinary service.

He returned to school and obtained his school certification a year later.

Ahidjo spent the next three years attending secondary school at the Ecole Primaire Supérieur in Yaoundé, the capital of the mandate, studying for a career in the civil service.

His classmates are, among others, Félix Sabbal-Lecco, Minister under his government, Abel Moumé Etia, first Cameroonian meteorological engineer and writer, as well as Jean-Faustin Betayéné, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Federal Cameroon.

At school, Ahidjo also played soccer and competed as a cyclist.

In 1942, Ahidjo joined the civil service as a radio operator for a postal service.

As part of his job, he worked on assignments in several major cities throughout the country, such as Douala, Ngaoundéré, Bertoua, and Mokolo.

According to his official biographer, Ahidjo was the first civil servant from northern Cameroun to work in the southern areas of the territory.

His experiences throughout the country were, according to Harvey Glickman, professor emeritus of political science at Haverford College and scholar of African politics, responsible for fostering his sense of national identity and provided him the sagacity to handle the problems of governing a multiethnic state.

In 1946, Ahidjo entered territorial politics.

He was reassuring towards the Church and the Muslim aristocracies in the north of the country and succeeded in embodying the union of conservative currents concerned about the growing number of protest movements in the 1950s.

While serving as Prime Minister, Ahidjo had administrative goals to move toward independence for Cameroon while reuniting the separated factions of the country and cooperating with French colonial powers.

On 12 June, with a motion from the National Assembly, Ahidjo became involved in negotiations with France in Paris.

These negotiations continued through October, resulting in formal recognition of Cameroonian plans for independence.

From 1953 to 1957, Ahidjo was a member of the Assembly of the French Union.

From 28 January 1957, to 10 May 1957, Ahidjo served as President of the Legislative Assembly of Cameroon.

In the same year he became Deputy Prime Minister in de facto head of state André-Marie Mbida's government.

In February 1958, Ahidjo became Prime Minister at the age of thirty-four after Mbida resigned.

They formed their own political party, Union des Populations du Cameroun. In March 1959, Ahidjo addressed the United Nations General Assembly in order to gather support for France's independence plan.

Influenced by Cold War tensions, the United Nations expressed concern about the UPC due to the party's pro-communist disposition.

The United Nations moved to end French trusteeship in Cameroon without organizing new elections or lifting the ban that France had imposed on the UPC.

The date for the simultaneous termination of French trusteeship and Cameroonian independence was set by Cameroon's National Assembly for 1 January 1960.

During and immediately after Cameroon was decolonized, Ahidjo recruited follow northern, Muslim Fulani and Peuhl into the army and an elite guard.

Ahidjo's support and collaboration in allowing for continued French influence economically and politically was faced with opposition from radicals who rejected French influence.

These radicals were sympathetic to a more revolutionary, procommunist approach to decolonization.

Ahidjo experienced a rebellion in the 1960s from the UPC, but defeated it by 1970 with the aid of French military force.

Ahidjo proposed and was granted four bills to gather power and declare a state of emergency in order to end the rebellion.

Following the independence of the French-controlled area of Cameroon, Ahidjo's focus turned on reuniting the British-controlled area of Cameroon with its newly independent counterpart.

Ahidjo established a single-party state under the Cameroon National Union (CNU) in 1966.

In 1972, Ahidjo abolished the federation in favor of a unitary state.

Ahidjo resigned from the presidency in 1982, and Paul Biya assumed the presidency.

This was an action that was surprising to Cameroonians.

Accused of being behind a coup plot against Biya in 1984, Ahidjo was sentenced to death in absentia, but he died of natural causes in 1989.

Ahidjo was born in Garoua, a major river port along the Benue River in northern Cameroun, which was at the time a French mandate territory.

His mother was a Fulani of slave descent, while his father was a Fulani village chief.

Ahidjo's mother raised him as a Muslim and sent him to Quranic kuttab school as a child.