Ahmadou Ahidjo

Ahmadou Ahidjo

Ahmadou Babatoura Ahidjo (born August 24, 1924 in Garoua , Cameroon ; † November 30, 1989 in Dakar , Senegal ) was President of Cameroon from 1960 to 1982. He was a member of the Fulbe people.

Life

Ahidjo began his political career in French Cameroon in the 1940s. When the country gained independence in 1960 , he was elected president and was able to convince part of British Cameroon to join his country. He was re-elected in 1965, 1970, 1975 and 1980 and gradually established his party as a unified party until he finally banned all others in 1976.

In the 1960s he was threatened by the rebellion of a group called the United Populations of Cameroon , which was crushed by 1970. In the early 1970s, he created an unpopular constitution that ended the autonomy of British Cameroon and established a unified leadership. Although many of his actions were dictatorial, his country became one of the most stable in Africa. The Yaoundés football stadium is named after him as the first president of Cameroon.

Ahidjo resigned on November 6, 1982 for health reasons. In 1983 serious conflicts developed with his successor Paul Biya and in July Ahidjo went into exile in France . He was sentenced to death in absentia on February 8, 1984 for participating in a conspiracy against Biya. On March 14, the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. Until his death, Ahidjo lived alternately in southern France and Senegal.

Web links

Commons : Ahmadou Ahidjo  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Ahmadou Ahidjo in the catalog of the German National Library
• El Hadji Ahmadou Babatoure Ahidjo in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely accessible)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Who was Ahmadou Ahidjo? Everything you need to know. Retrieved July 30, 2019 (American English).