Sourou-Migan Apithy

Sourou-Migan Marcellin Joseph Apithy (8 April 1913 – 3 December 1989) was a Beninese political figure most active when his country was known as Dahomey.

He arose on a political scene where one's power was dictated by what region in Dahomey one lived in.

Apithy studied at Bordeaux in a Lycée or secondary school.

After he completed his studies there, he was accepted at the public Political Science School in Paris where he took courses in commercial studies.

He later worked at a French company in Western Africa as an expert accountant.

Born on 8 April 1913 in Porto-Novo, Apithy was a descendant of an Ogu royal family though was not born into privilege himself.

His middle name, Migan, signified familial ties with chief ministers of old Dahomeyan kingdoms.

He began his education at local mission schools and gained a bias for Roman Catholicism, for which he would later be insulted.

Apithy would later become assistant teacher at his school.

To further his education, Apithy travelled to Paris in 1933.

After legal and economic studies at the Free School of Political Sciences, the National School of Economic and Social Organization, and at the Improvement Center in Business Administration of the Paris Chamber of Commerce, Apithy gained his diploma in accounting.

He also served as counsel in Paris and Dakar appeal courts.

Married, he fathered two children.

Having voluntarily enlisted in the army, Apithy saw combat from 1939 to 1940 as an artillery officer.

Before his country acquired its independence, beginning 1945, he was part of Dahomey's Constitutive Assembly and was re-elected for a number of terms.

He would not return to Dahomey until 1945.

Shortly after his return Francis Aupiais, a well-liked Roman Catholic pastor, encouraged Apithy to pursue a career in politics.

It began in July, when the latter was a participant in the Monnerville Commission.

Running as a Socialist candidate, Apithy was elected to represent Togo and Dahomey at the French Constituent Assembly in 1945, receiving 6,600 votes out of a total of 9,057.

Voters in the election had to be French citizens or Dahomeyans whom the French government deemed responsible.

His nomination as a candidate for the Assembly was a strategic move on the part of the Europeans; they wished to elect a black person to appease their colonists, while they still held full power.

Nonetheless, Apithy did pass some legislation at the Assembly, including the February 1946 formation of a secondary school in Porto Novo.

Apithy was said to have ended slavery in Dahomey, although in fact he was not involved with the abolition bill.

He was named a member of the Commission on Overseas Territories and debated on the political situation of the overseas departments and territories of France.

In June 1946, he was re-elected to his post with 8,096 ballots of 9.069 cast, and was soon appointed attorney general of Dahomey.

Thereafter Apithy was named to several political posts, all while a member of Dahomey's only political party, the Dahomeyan Progressive Union (UPD).

He was the choice for vice president of the Rassemblement Democratique Africain (RDA), though left the organization shortly afterwards when facing Catholic opposition.

The year 1946 also marked his entry into the General Council, becoming one of its inaugural 30 representatives.

In the November 1946 French National Assembly elections, Apithy ran under the ticket of Section Française de l'Internationale Ouvrière (SFIO).

Winning 32,977 votes out of 33,605 cast, he captured Dahomey's sole seat allotted at the Assembly.

His only opponent, Emile Poisson, left the race the day before the election.

One of Apithy's first actions in Paris was naming his membership with the Commissions on Methods of Communication, Economic Affairs, and Finances.

After joining the Grand Council of French West Africa (AOF) in 1947, the new deputy proposed a bill on its functions.

When Hubert Maga nominated him to that function, he was also the prime minister of Dahomey (Benin) from 1957 to 1958.

By 1960, he had become Vice President of Dahomey.

He was sometimes referred to as being part of the 'three-headed monster' of the 1960s in Benin.

He served as the 2nd President of Dahomey between 25 January 1964 and 27 November 1965, when he was overthrown by Christophe Soglo after infighting among the members of the government.

After this event he fled to Paris for the first time but he returned to Cotonou after the 1970 coup, when he became a member of the Presidential Triumvirate during the early 1970s.

Following the 1972 coup, he was put under arrest alongside Justin Ahomadegbé-Tomêtin and Maga, and was not released until 1981.

He died in exile in his Paris house, in December 1989, shortly before the transition to democracy in his country.