Ahmadou Babatoura Ahidjo (24 August 1924 – 30 November 1989) was a Cameroonian politician who was the first president of Cameroon from 1960 until 1982. He was previously the first Prime Minister from the country's independence in January 1960 until May of that same year following the creation of the presidency.
Ahidjo played a major role in the establishment of Cameroon as an independent state in 1960 as well as integrating the French and English-speaking parts of the country. During Ahidjo's time in office, he established a centralised political system. In foreign affairs, Ahidjo pursued a pro-France policy, and benefitted from French support when defeating the pro-communist rebellion of the Union des Populations du Cameroun (UPC) in 1970.
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 whilst in exile in Dakar, Senegal.
Ahidjo was born in Garoua, a major river port along the Benue River in northern Cameroon, 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. In addressing the United Nations, Ahidjo and his supporters favored integration and reunification whereas more radical players such as the UPC preferred immediate reunification. However, both sides were seeking a plebiscite for reunification of the separated Cameroons. The UN decided on the integration and reunification plebiscite. The plebiscite resulted in northern area of the British Cameroons voting to join Nigeria and the southern area voting to reunite with the rest of Cameroon. Ahidjo worked with Premier John Foncha of the Anglophone Cameroon throughout the process of integrating the two parts of Cameroon. In July 1961, Ahidjo attended a conference at which the plans and conditions for merging the Cameroons were made and later adopted by both the National Assemblies of the Francophone and Anglophone Cameroons. Ahidjo and Foncha met in Bamenda in order to create a constitution for the united territories. In their meetings, Ahidjo and Foncha agreed not to join the French community or the Commonwealth. In the summer of 1961, Ahidjo and Foncha resolved any issues between them and agreed upon the final draft for the constitution, which was drawn in Foumban, a city in West Cameroon. Despite the fact that the plans to establish a federalist state were made public in Foumban, Ahidjo and Foncha had private discussions before the official Foumban conference. On 1 October 1961, the two separate Cameroons were merged, establishing the Federal Republic of Cameroon with Ahidjo as the president and Foncha as the Vice President.
The issue of territorial administration was a topic of disagreement between Foncha and Ahidjo. In December 1961, Ahidjo issued a decree that split the federation into administrative regions under the Federal Inspectors of Administration. The inspectors were responsible to Ahidjo and for representing the federation, with access to police force and federal services. The power given to these inspectors led to conflict between them and Prime Ministers.
During the first years of the regime, the French ambassador Jean-Pierre Bénard is sometimes considered as the true "president" of Cameroon. This independence is indeed largely theoretical since French "advisers" are responsible for assisting each minister and have the reality of power. The Gaullist government preserves its influence over the country through the signing of "cooperation agreements" covering all sectors of Cameroon's sovereignty. Thus, in the monetary field, Cameroon retains the CFA franc and entrusts its monetary policy to its former guardian power. All strategic resources are exploited by France, French troops are maintained in the country, and a large proportion of Cameroonian army officers are French, including the Chief of Staff.