Biya was born Bi Mvondo Paul-Bartholomew Afam Biya in 1933 in Mvomeka’a village. He comes from the Beti-Pahuin tribe in Centre-South Province of Cameroon. He graduated with a diploma in International Relations from Paris, France in 1961.
Biya was fished from oblivion and mentored by Ahmadou Ahidjo right up to the time he became president in November 1982. The mentoring involved appointing the technocrat Biya to the civil service and political posts at the same time. He was made Director of Cabinet of the Ministry of Education in January 1964, and Secretary General of National Education the following year.
He became Director of the Civil Cabinet of the President in 1967 and retained the post when he was made Secretary-General of the Presidency in 1968. He became a minister in 1968 and still remained Secretary-General of the Presidency. He became Prime Minister in 1975 and in 1979 a law was passed to make the Premier the successor to the presidency. When Ahidjo resigned in November 1982 because of ill health, Biya naturally succeeded him.
Ahidjo remained head of the then ruling Cameroon National Union (CNU) and Biya was drafted into the top organs of the party. To cement his position he was made Ahidjo’s deputy.
It is still a puzzle what Ahidjo, a northern Muslim, saw in the dour Biya, a southern Christian.
Whatever the case, long before the late Levy Mwanawasa of Zambia and Bingu wa Mutharika of Malawi turned against the men who baby-sat them to the presidency, Biya had shown them how to deal with unwanted puppet-masters.
After coming to power in 1982, Biya wasted little time in kicking Ahidjo in the teeth and sending him to exile less than a year after the transition.
In the first few months, the relationship between the two men was very good but soon, Biya started moves to come out of the shadow of the towering personality of the charismatic and visionary Ahidjo. When things threatened to get out of hand, Ahidjo fled to France.
REAL COUP
From his French base, he accused Biya of abuse of power and paranoia about plots to topple him. True to form, Biya responded by accusing Ahidjo of hatching an ouster plot against him. He slapped Ahidjo with treason charges and tried him in absentia with two others. The defendants got death sentences, which Biya commuted to life imprisonment.
No sooner than the Ahidjo trial ended than Biya faced a real coup. Members of Presidential Guard who were mainly Muslim northerners recruited by Ahidjo took control of the army headquarters and radio station and announced they had ousted Biya. But the plotters failed to cut telephone lines and this allowed new army commander General Pierre Semengue to get reinforcements from outside Yaounde. Heavy fighting ensued for two days where about 1,000 were killed. Forty-six guards who took part in the plots were swiftly executed after a discredited trial by a military tribunal. This marked the start of bloody purges by Biya of Ahidjo loyalists he thought were involved in the coup.
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