Background
Sourou-Migan Apithy was born on April 8, 1913, at Porto Novo, from a chiefly Goun family.
Sourou-Migan Apithy was born on April 8, 1913, at Porto Novo, from a chiefly Goun family.
Apithy studied at Bordeaux in a Lycée or secondary school. After he completed his studies there, he was accepted at the public Political Science School in Paris where he took courses in commercial studies. He trained as an accountant and obtained diplomas from the Institute of Political Science and the National School of Economic and Social Organisation in Paris.
In 1945 he was co-opted with Leopold Senghor onto the commission of the French government to decide representation of African territories in Paris. He represented Dahomey first in the Constituent Assembly of 1945, then in the National Assembly from 1946 to 1958. Like Senghor, he was first of all affiliated to the French Socialists, then joined the group of Indépendants d’Outremer (lOM) and later attached himself to the conservative Independent Republicans.
In Dahomey he had first of all been the leader of the Dahomey Progressive Union (UPD) from which the northerners split in 1951, then leader of a new party, the Republican Party of Dahomey (PRD). In this capacity he became Dahomey’s first chief minister in 1957 and Prime Minister in 1958 at the head of a scries of different coalitions. During this period, although hitherto a federalist, he took Dahomey out of the Mali Federation. He was toppled after the 1959 elections when Ahomadegbe’s party decided to support Hubert Maga. In the grand coalition at independence 1960 he was Vice-President, with a succession of other portfolios, but was being increasingly eased out by Maga and from 1961 to 1963 combined the Vice-Presidency with being Ambassador to Paris.
With the overthrow of Maga in October 1963 (following demonstrations which began in Apithy’s political base, Porto Novo) he formed part of the provisional government set up by the army chief General Soglo. After the elections of January 1964, he became President in tandem with Ahomadegbe as Prime Minister. Their relationship soon became difficult and by November 1965 Ahomadegbe was pressing to oust Apithy and was only prevented from doing so by a new intervention by General Soglo.
From December 1965 to July 1968 he was in exile in Paris and when the military prohibited former office holders from contesting the May 1968 elections, his followers in his region mounted a successful boycott of the polls there which led to the cancellation of the elections. Maga and Ahomadegbe temporarily found common cause and were all three prevented from entering Dahomey by the government of Emile Zinsou. After the fall of Zinsou, a new military government of Colonel de Souza invited the “big three” back to contest elections, but poll irregularities led once again to another cancellation and a "grave crisis in which the north threatened secession. Following mediation by the French and President Eyadema of Togo, a Presidential Council was set up with Apithy designated as the third in line of the rotating presidents. His term was to be from 1974 to 1976. (Maga was the first President from 1970 to 1972 during this period.) Apithy seemed isolated in the Presidential Council and was unable to prevent the removal of the University of Dahomey from Porto Novo to Abomey- Calavi. He spent some periods in Paris, apparently for medical treatment. Prior to the coming to power of Ahomadegbe he found more common cause with Maga, an alliance which developed after Ahomadegbe’s accession in May 1972. At the time of the coup Apithy was once again resting in Paris, but returned to Dahomey, even though almost certain that he would be detained. The coup effectively prevented him from taking power as the third President in rotation.
The oldest and most astute of Dahomey’s “big three" politicians (with Ahomadegbe and Maga) who have dominated civilian politics for the last 25 years. His own fief lies in the south¬east, among the Yoruba-speaking peoples (the Nago and the Goun), although early in his political career he had some pretensions to national support. With his substantial business interests and his penchant for intrigue, he is very much identified among younger Dahomeyans with the old political class who have been responsible for Dahomey’s predicament. Never-theless in the elections of 1970 he showed he could still mobilise support among the radical intellectuals of his home town, Porto Novo.
He was leader of a new party, the Republican Party of Dahomey (PRD).
After being released on amnesty, Apithy moved to Paris, where he lived out the rest of his life. On December 3, 1989, he died. Just days afterward, Kerekou proclaimed the end to socialism in Dahomey (renamed Benin in 1975), which he had established in November 1974.