Ahmadou Babatoura Ahidjo was the first President of Cameroon. He was born to a Muslim chieftain and one of his wives. 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, the capital of Cameroon.
After completing his education, Ahidjo secured himself a job with the colonial postal service. His job duties required him to operate and repair telegraph and radio transmitters, and he was often on the road, crisscrossing his country, where he began to build up a network of contacts in all of the big cities. His experiences during his travel fostered his sense of national identity and provided him the necessary intelligence and erudition to govern a multi-ethnic country like Cameroon.
In 1946, Ahidjo entered local politics. Cameroon was granted responsible government in 1957, and André Marie Mbida, leader of the Démocrates Camerounais party, became the territory’s first prime minister. Ahidjo, who had joined the Démocrates during the previous year and whose influence among the northern deputies was widely acknowledged, was appointed vice premier and minister of the interior in the Mbida government. When Mbida was forced to resign in February 1958, Ahidjo, who had broken with him earlier, took over as premier. He began negotiating with France to gain independence for Cameroon. It was agreed that Cameroon would become independent on January 1, 1960.
Ahidjo was by nature retiring and not given to personal ostentation and flamboyant public display. These qualities contributed to a political style marked not only by dignity and an air of quiet command, but also by a capacity for occasional firm, even ruthless, action (as demonstrated in 1962 when, at a single stroke, he jailed all four leaders of opposition parties). His political philosophy included espousal of the single-party state, a commitment to pan-African ideals, and a somewhat vaguely defined brand of African socialism. He was a firm proponent of intra-African cooperation—trying to bring peace between rival factions in Cameroon’s north and south—and his government played key roles in various regional organizations, as well as in the broader-based Organization of African Unity.
He went into exile in France in August 1983 and in early 1984 was sentenced to death in absentia by a Cameroon court. Though the sentence was later commuted to an indefinite term of detention, Ahidjo never returned to Cameroon. He died of a heart attack November 30, 1989, in Dakar, Senegal.
