President Ahidjo and the audacity of Samuel Eboua

Cameroon`s first and former President, Ahmadou Ahidjo, is credited with administrative wit and shrewdness, especially when it comes to taking a view contrary to everyone’s in order to solve a problem or make a point.

Of his style of leadership, scholars affirm that he was a very “present” leader who mastered his country well, to the point of knowing what was going on “everywhere and all the time”.

Here is an example: in Mbu (Baforchu), elders recount that once when he was still in power and the land dispute between Mbu (Baforchu) and neighbouring Bali was boiling, he personally visited the locality incognito. He is said to have had himself driven from Mile 8 (Akum), through Alahtening, Baba II, Mbu and on to Bali, in order to see things for himself.

Furthermore, I recall that not so long ago, I saw a picture of him in the palace of Nso with the then Fon of Nso, Mbinglo. That picture must have been taken in the early 1960s. They were seated somewhere inside the palace and having a conversation.

Although I could not tell whether they were communicating through an interpreter or directly to each, I would not be surprised if they were speaking to each other in pidgin which I know Ahidjo mastered quite well. This could hardly be odd, considering that Ahidjo once worked in the heavily pidgin English city of Douala, years before becoming president of the Republic. He worked there as a radio operator.

As another illustration of his knowledge of Pidgin English, I recall that while I was a staff journalist at WEST AFRICA magazine in London in the 1980s, we ran a story about how while attending an informal former Heads of State meeting in Southern Africa, Ahidjo was asked whether he would ever return to Cameroon again.

This was after the 1984 abortive coup d’état against Paul Biya after which Ahidjo was sentenced to death in absentia by a Yaounde military tribunal, for his alleged part in the attempt. He responded to the journalist who asked him the question by saying: “I go go back. Why I no go go back? I give power for small boy, then ye begin dey … (the rest of his words were inaudible to the journalist and so were not recorded)”. After we published that story, there was some “commotion and unease” among political leaders in Cameroon.

On an earlier occasion, and when he was still president of the Republic, Ahidjo had an encounter with Samuel Eboua who is said to have been a Vice Principal at the Lycée Leclerc in Yaounde. Apparently a group of students at the institution, including Ahidjo`s child, got into some trouble at school. Samuel Eboua asked them to bring their parents to school.

As the story goes, there was an outcry and outrage from some observers and authorities as to how Eboua could be so “mad” as to send such a message to the President of the Republic. But all went well for the Vice Principal because far from sanctioning him, President Ahidjo sent someone to represent him and after that, he sent for Eboua and congratulated him for a job well done.

Later President Ahidjo appointed Eboua Chargé de Missions with rank of Deputy Minister at the Presidency of the Republic. He also served as Head of the Social and Cultural Division at the Presidency of the Republic. In 1975, when Paul Biya who had hitherto been Secretary General at the Presidency of the Republic was appointed Prime Minister, Eboua became the new Secretary General at the Presidency of the Republic, with rank of Minister of State.

When Paul Biya succeeded Ahidjo as President in 1982, he made Eboua Minister of State in charge of Agriculture. The following year Eboua was dropped in another cabinet reshuffle but was later reappointed Chairman and General Manager of Cameroon Airlines, a position he had once occupied under Ahidjo.

After multiparty politics was reintroduced in Cameroon in 1990, Eboua joined the opposition and became President of the UNDP. As a leading opposition member he took part in the demonstrations that were staged by the opposition in 1991 with a view to pressurizing Paul Biya into holding a “Sovereign National Conference”.

The conference was never held because Biya said it was “sans objet” (pointless). Eboua however took part in the tripartite conference that was held in Yaounde in 1992. In the same year the UNDP dethroned him and he formed his own party, the MDP, in 1993. In 1992, Eboua declared his intention to run for president in that year but later withdrew in favour of Ni John Fru Ndi, chairman of the SDF party. Eboua ran again for president in 1997 but only obtained 2.4 per cent of the votes cast. He died in 2000.