Ahmadou Ahidjo:Incompetent autocrat begins to Win history’s sympathy

Unlike Paul Biya, Ahmadou Ahidjo had the makings of a successful president. He was deeply committed to the development of Cameroon and did his very best to achieve that objective. But his road map was faulty and his result meager. He feared Anglophones as a powerful minority that could dominate the majority Francophones if they and their values were given their rightful place in the new unified Cameroon. He also hated the active Bamileke and denied to develop the indigenous private sector in favour of a huge public sector. Inefficient and corrupt management led to the collapse of public enterprises. The fear of Anglophones denied Cameroon an excellent opportunity of a modern democratic state with much institutional leverage for development. But Biya’s lack of mission and greater failure now portray Ahidjo in better light. How lucky! Friday 30 November marked the 18th year of Ahmadou Ahidjo’s passing. In other times the day would have passed like any other because when he left office in 1982 after twenty-two years, Cameroon had not make significant progress by which to remember him.
But the 25th anniversary of Paul Biya’s accession to power which took place recently makes Cameroonians remember Ahidjo with some fondness, given Biya’s greater development deficit. Ahidjo made bad policy choices that in the end compromised his otherwise commendable efforts. He was committed to the development of Cameroon and sought building a great nation. He failed.
Paul Biya went in the opposite direction. Devoid of nationalistic fervour, Biya is the unusual case of a leader who seeks to be great at the high cost of his country’s progress! The result is also failure, but more heart-rending. Political sainthood. When you add the fact that Ahidjo, the unquestioned leader of a one-party regime, decided voluntarily to retire; and that he handed power to a Paul Biya whom he handpicked; and that Biya wants power for life, then the new Ahidjo who emerges easily qualifies for beatification – on his way to political sainthood.
That is the big, unintended favour that Biya does to Ahidjo. Still, to paint Ahidjo in these strokes is to be generous. The 1961 union with Anglophones offered Cameroon a welcome opportunity to get the new nation off to a democratic start. Ahidjo instead chose single party rule which he used grossly abusively. His war with the UPC, his fear for Anglophones and his hatred for the Bamileke of the West combined to distort his perception of his development task. To his credit though, Ahidjo was profoundly committed to the economic development of Cameroon. He did a considerable lot in that regard but his achievement was meager, in spite of all. His policy options were much influenced by his strong political biases. For fear of putting economic power into the hands of Anglophones and Bamileke who were at the time the more business - wise and active, he deliberately turned away from developing the private sector. Instead, Ahidjo, influenced by ideas of central planning, made an over-kill of the public sector. He raised a huge arsenal of public corporations and enterprises, and against market practice, tried to turn economic productivity to the public sector. A ballooned public sector also offered him wide scope to reward political allies. Public finances were good and were used abusively to keep money losing public companies going. Collapse of the public sector was only a matter of time. Wasteful management of state enterprises and inefficient and corrupt central administration were in full sway.Private business. The collapse, terrible as it was in itself when it came, could nonetheless have had a limited impact, had those been a strong undergrowth of small indigenous private business to cushion. That sector was little existent and much too fragile. It was in the immediate years of the Biya succession that came the helpless crash of the top-heavy economy with the first puff of the wind! Ahidjo called his economic model “planned liberalism”. He was so committed to his enterprise of development that already by the 10th anniversary of independence in 1970, the man was proudly announcing Cameroon at the point of economic take-off, influenced, no doubt, by Rostow’s Stages of economic growth. Ahidjo launched a national campaign for food self-sufficiency code-named Green Revolution and also launched another campaign of self-centred development. He created an integrated rural development scheme in every plain and river basin of Cameroon. Agricultural projects mushroomed all over Cameroon. Even with the arrival of crude oil in 1976, Ahidjo still insisted on the development of non-oil resources. But his great project was doomed. State-ownership and abusive management plus neglect under Biya led to their collapse.
Ahidjo also tried to pick up education and health. Under him Cameroon was placed among African countries with the highest school attendance rates. `His shortcoming in these sectors was lack of vision. He did not see far enough and let off the effort with the first praise worth results. Then came Biya who neglected those initiatives and let everything fall back to zero, if not below. Ahidjo’s greatest errors came from his political biases. From self-rule in 1957 when he was vice-pm and interior minister he developed hatred for the Bamileke who supported the Marxist UPC. Even after executing Ernest Ouandie, the last of them in 1971, he still never trusted them. Political activists from the west sometime put the estimate of their kith and kin killed by Ahidjo’s forces in the long bush war that began with the banning of the UPC in 1955, at more than 450,000. Strong minority For Anglophones, it was fear of domination by a strong and well-organized minority. At re-unification in 1961, Anglophones were about one-fifth of the population of Cameroon but far more institutionally structured than Francophone. Buea was a perfectly functional parliamentary democracy with separated powers and well-organised and uncontested elections that led to change of government.
Anglophones had more of every professional corps than Francophone viz lawyers, medical doctors and dentists, trained nurses, engineers of all branches, architects, trained administrator, a well-trained and discipline police force; and more. In 1976 the former USSR offered funding for the construction of an agricultural college in Dschang on condition that the contract was undertaken by a Cameroonian group. The only one capable of handling such works was an Anglophone, Nangah Company. Such a high level of institutional organisation discouraged Ahidjo from an earlier idea of merging the two systems whereby the strengths of either would be pulled together. Inevitably, it was Anglophone values that would have prevailed in almost every respect, something that the French feared would push Cameroon into Anglo-Saxon orbit. Then followed a multi-pronged anti-Anglophone policy aimed at undermining everything Anglophone. Marginalization and minimization in the public sector, and assimilation, which together often make Anglophones, appear like foreigners in their own country. Anglophones, in fact suffer a sense of alienation. Though officially a bilingual country, English is a distant second language. Neither Ahidjo nor Biya ever made a public speech in English, as a way of spiting Anglophones.

Had Ahidjo summoned the courage to accept the excellent democratic values, high level of social organization and top quality, world class trained manpower that Anglophones brought to the union of modern Cameroon, why wouldn’t he have achieved his great project of Cameroon? He failed; his biases wrecked him. But now, eighteen years in his grave, Cameroon is in greater misfortune, brought about by his hand-picked successor. Paul Biya is now obliging Cameroonians to see that Ahidjo was perhaps not so terrible after all! How sweet!

Courtesy - The Herald