Ahmadou Babatoura Ahidjo: First President of Cameroon

Ahmadou Babatura Ahidjo

Ahmadou Babatoura Ahidjo was the first President of Cameroon. He was the son of a Muslim chieftain. Encouraged by his mother at a young age, Ahidjo attended a local religious school and taught himself to read and write French. Although he struggled at first with his higher education, he graduated with honors from the prestigious Ecole Priamaire Superieure, in Yaoundé. After completing his education, the young Ahidjo secured himself a job with the Colonial Postal Service. His job duties required him to operate and repair telegraphs and radio transmitters. As a result, he was often on the road crisscrossing his country, where he began to build up a network of contacts in the major cities of the country. He learnt a lot during his travels and this fostered his sense of national identity and eventually provided him with the necessary intelligence and erudition to govern a multi-ethnic country like Cameroon. As France relinquished its hold on its former colonies, Ahmadou Ahidjo guided Cameroon through its first two turbulent decades of independence. Known today for his surprise exit from politics near the end of his life, Ahidjo's iron clampdown on his nation for a quarter century in the name of national unity continues to echo through modern Cameroonian society.

Childhood and early life

He was born on August 24, 1924 in Nassarao, a village near Garoua in Cameroon. While his father was a Fulani village chief, his mother was a Fulani slave. Ahidjo's mother, who was Muslim, sent him to a Quranic school. When he failed an important school exam at the age of 14, he quit school and started working as a veterinary assistant.  At the age of 15, he enrolled at the Ecole Priamaire Superieure, an elite school in Yaoundé, the capital of Cameroon.

Career

After graduating from the school at age of 18, Ahidjo joined the postal service where he worked as a radio and telegraph operator. His job required him to travel extensively throughout the country. This enabled him to make important contacts in key cities around the country. 

 In 1947, at the age of 22, he entered politics and was elected to the Cameroon Territorial Assembly.  

From 1953–1956, Ahidjo served in Paris as Cameroon's representative in the Assembly of the French Union. He then served as Vice Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior in the first Cameroon Government in 1957. He eventually formed his own party, the Cameroon Union (CU) in 1958 following the fall of the government of Prime Minister André-Marie Mbida , and became the new Prime Minister.

 During this time, a nationalist wind of independence was blowing over colonial Africa and the radical, nationalist Union of the Populations of Cameroon UPC was demanding immediate independence from France. To press its demands it had taken up arms against the French administration. Ahidjo used French troops to clamp down the rebellion and offered amnesty to those who surrendered. 

When Cameroon finally gained independence from France in 1960, Ahmadou Ahidjo was elected as the first President. A year later, he invited the territory of British Cameroons to join his nation and the two territories; the Republic of Cameroon and Southern Cameroons joined and became the United Republic of Cameroon after a plebiscite sanctioned a vote approving the union. The Cameroon Union CU was then renamed the Cameroon National Union (CNU) and became the only party in the country. 

President Ahmadou Ahidjou was re-elected as president in 1965, 1970, 1975 and 1980. Although he continually called for unity between the different segments of the country rendered so by cultural religious and ethnic diversities, Ahidjou had to continually repress rebellions throughout his long rule. 

 In 1975, Ahidjou appointed his long-time protégé, Paul Biya, to be his Prime Minister. The greatest surprise came when Ahidjou shocked the nation by suddenly resigning on November 4, 1982. After resigning he named Paul Biya to take over as president. 

 Despite rumors that he was suffering from a mysterious terminal illness which many speculators used to explain his sudden resignation; Ahidjou began touring across Cameroon in January 1983 to canvass support for Biya. After Biya's legitimacy was sufficiently well established, Ahidjo left for France.  

An attempt to overthrow Biya by a rebellion lead by soldiers mostly from the northern part of the country like Ahidjo in a coup in June 1983 was put down with great difficulty and soon Biya and Ahidjo began hurling acrimonious accusations at one another, eventually resulting in Biya's government passing a death sentence against Ahidjo in absentia.  

Biya remained in power in Cameroon and Ahidjo divided his time in exile between Senegal and France till the time he died.

Over a span of three decades, Ahmadou Ahidjo successfully ruled a vast multi-ethnic, multi-racial patchwork of different tribes. He led Cameroon’s transition from a French colonial territory to a fully independent bilingual nation.