The First Ever Coup In Africa And How It Was Staged

 

Slyvanus Olympio became the first president of the Republic of Togo after the country gained it's independence from the French in April, 1960. He was a gifted orator and gave many heart-warming speeches but even with that, Slyvanus was not liked by his own people and thirty-three months later, they showed it in Africa's first coup.

 They struck shortly after midnight on January 13, 1963, when Olympio was either sleeping or working on a speech he was going to deliver to his counterpart in Liberia, William Tubman (the stories differs but the main lines are clear). 

About ten armed men in combat attires quickly attacked and defeated Olympio's guards and sensing danger, Olympio instructed his wife and other family members to hide whilst he climbed a wall, landed on the other side, which was the garden and parking lot of the United States embassy and hid in a car. 

The armed men who happens to be rebels meanwhile, finds Olympio's wife, Dina and asks for Olympio but she has no idea of his whereabouts.  The coup had began and almost the entire cabinet of ministers are put under arrest. The military camp of Tokoin is now in the hands of the rebels and Olympio is still in the car, hiding. 

Four soldiers scale the wall and fish him out of his hiding place. As day breaks, they ask him to leave the embassy grounds with them but he refuses and around 7:00 am, an angry officer, Étienne Gnassingbé Eyadéma fires three bullets at him and the life of the Republic of Togo's first president comes to an end.

 The rebels then replace Slyvanus with his brother-in-law, Nicolas Grunitzky. Before independence, Togo was controlled by France as a protectorate and after independence, France demobilized all Togolese soldiers. About thirty of these soldiers who had been fighting France's colonial wars in Algeria and Southeast Asia wanted to be part of the new Togolese army

 but Slyvanus Olympio, who was a staunch nationalist refused and Eyadéma, his assassinator was among the men he snubbed. The infamous coup led to a violent dictatorship which lasted for decades. Eyadéma eventually took the reins of the country after a successful coup on January 13, 1967 and ruled for thirty-eight years after which he passed on the mantle to his son, Faure Gnassingbé.