Gnassingbé Eyadéma
General Gnassingbé Eyadéma (born Étienne Eyadéma, December 26, 1935 – February 5, 2005) was the President of Togo from 1967 until his death in 2005. He participated in two successful military coups, in January 1963 and January 1967, and became President on April 14, 1967. As President, he created a political party, the Rally of the Togolese People (RPT), and headed an anticommunist 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.
Early life
Étienne Eyadéma Gnassingbé was born on December 26, 1935 in Pya, a village in the prefecture of Kozah in the Kara Region, to a peasant family of the Kabye ethnic group. According to Comi M. Toulabor, his 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. In 1953, Eyadema joined the French army where he was trained in weapon use and the art of war. Eyadema participated in the French Indochina War and the Algerian War. After nearly 10 years in the French army, Eyadema returned to Togo in 1962. In 1963, he was a leader in the 1963 Togolese coup d'état against President Sylvanus Olympio, who was killed during the attack. He helped establish Nicolas Grunitzky as the new President of Togo. In 1967, Colonel Eyadema of the Togolese Army led a second military coup against Grunitzky. Eyadema installed himself as president on April 14, 1967, as well as Minister of National Defense, an office that he retained for 38 years.
