Gnassingbé Eyadéma

According to Comi M. Toulabor, Eyadéma's official date of birth is "based on a fertile imagination" and it would be more accurate to say that he was born around 1930.

His mother was later known as Maman N'Danida, or Maman N'Danidaha.

Gnassingbé Eyadéma (born Étienne Eyadéma Gnassingbé, 26 December 1935 – 5 February 2005) was a Togolese military officer and politician who was the president of Togo from 1967 until his death in 2005, after which he was immediately succeeded by his son, Faure Gnassingbé.

Usually Eyadéma is said to have been born on 26 December 1935 in the northern quartiers of Pya, a village in the prefecture of Kozah in the Kara Region, to a peasant family of the Kabye ethnic group.

But this date has been disputed.

In 1953, Eyadéma joined the French Army after completing primary school.

He participated in the French Indochina War and the Algerian War.

Following nearly 10 years in the French army, Eyadéma returned to Togo in 1962.

He was a leader in the 1963 Togolese coup d'état against President Sylvanus Olympio, who was assassinated during the attack; it has often been stated that Eyadéma himself committed the murder.

On this occasion he helped establish Nicolas Grunitzky as the nation's new president.

Four years on, Eyadéma, having fallen out with Grunitzky, led a second military coup against the latter.

Eyadéma participated in two successful military coups, in January 1963 and January 1967, and became president on 14 April 1967.

This time there was no bloodshed (the deposed Grunitzky managed to escape to exile in Paris) and Eyadéma installed himself as president on 14 April 1967, in addition to awarding himself the post of Defence Minister.

He held both offices for almost 38 years.

According to Comi M Toulabor (researcher at the Centre d’études d’Afrique noire), "Eyadema had been a personal friend of the French president, Jacques Chirac. He had remained in power for 38 years thanks to a couple of coups, systematic electoral fraud, the faithful allegiance of an army packed with supporters and members of his Kabye ethnic group, solid foreign support (especially from France), and adroit management of access to Togo’s meagre economic resources."

Three years after taking power, Eyadéma created the Rally of the Togolese People as the country's only legal party.

He won an uncontested election in 1972.

During his rule he escaped several assassination attempts; in 1974 he survived a plane crash in the northern part of the country near Sarakawa.

After another unsuccessful assassination attempt by a bodyguard, he carried the bullet removed by the surgeon as an amulet.

In 1979, the country adopted a new constitution that returned the country (at least nominally) to civilian rule.

The RPT was entrenched as the only party; the president of the party was automatically nominated for a seven-year term as president upon election to the party presidency and confirmed in office via an unopposed referendum.

Under these provisions, Eyadéma was re-elected unopposed in 1979 and 1986.

As president, he created a political party, the Rally of the Togolese People (RPT), and headed an anti-communist single-party regime until the early 1990s, when reforms leading to multiparty elections began.

Although his rule was seriously challenged by the events of the early 1990s, he ultimately consolidated power again and won multiparty presidential elections in 1993, 1998 and 2003; the opposition boycotted the 1993 election and denounced the 1998 and 2003 election results as fraudulent.

At the time of his death, Eyadéma was the longest-serving ruler in Africa.

A national conference was held in August 1991, electing Joseph Kokou Koffigoh as Prime Minister and leaving Eyadéma as merely a ceremonial president.

Although Eyadéma attempted to suspend the conference, surrounding the venue with soldiers, he subsequently accepted the outcome.

Despite this, Eyadéma managed to remain in power with the backing of the army.

In March 1993, an unsuccessful attack was made on the Tokoin military camp, where Eyadéma was living; several people were killed in the attack, including Eyadéma's personal chief of staff, General Mawulikplimi Ameji.

He attempted to legitimize his rule with a multiparty presidential election in August 1993, which was boycotted by the opposition; facing only two minor challengers, he won 96.42% of the vote, although turnout was reportedly low outside of his native Kara Region.

The European Union suspended aid in 1993 in protest of alleged voting irregularities and human rights violations.

Eyadéma officially won re-election in the June 1998 presidential election, defeating Gilchrist Olympio of the Union of the Forces of Change (UFC) with 52.13% of the vote according to official results, amid allegations of fraud and accusations of the massacre of hundreds of government opponents.

In late December 2002, the Constitution was changed to remove term limits on the office of president.

Previously, presidents had been limited to two five-year terms, and Eyadéma would have therefore been forced to step down after the 2003 election.

With the removal of these limitations, however, Eyadéma was free to stand again and did so, winning the election on 1 June with 57.78% of the vote.

He was sworn in for another term on 20 June.

Another constitutional change was to reduce the minimum age of the president to 35 years, rather than 45.

As Eyadéma's son Faure Gnassingbé was 35, many observers assumed that he was opening the way for a dynastic succession should he die suddenly.

Eyadéma constructed a large palace near his family home in Pya a few kilometers north of Lama-Kara.

According to a 2018 study, "Gnassingbé Eyadema's rule rested on repression, patronage, and a bizarre leadership cult."