On November 29, 1965 General Christophe Soglo forced Dahomey's feuding civilian leaders, President Sourou Migan Apithy and Vice President Justin Ahomadegbe, to resign, ending the coalition that had governed since January 1964. Under Dahomey's unusual 1964 constitution, executive power was split between the elected president Apithy and the vice president Ahomadegbe, who was also head of government; the two, representing rival southern regions of the three way regional rivalry that dominated Dahomeyan politics, had been locked in an escalating conflict of authority worsened by strikes and social unrest. Soglo, the army chief who had staged the 1963 coup against Maga and then handed power back to civilians in January 1964, arbitrated the feud and, when it proved irreconcilable, compelled both men to step down, Apithy on November 27 and Ahomadegbe on November 29.
Apithy fled to Paris. Power passed provisionally to National Assembly president Tahirou Congacou, who under the constitution had fifty days to organize a new presidential election. That interim lasted just three weeks before Soglo took power outright, the companion event of December 22, 1965.
Researched Details
Researched
Independent research, added record by record. Hover any label for what it means.
Target identified in Coup Atlas research: President Sourou Migan Apithy and Vice President Justin Ahomadegbe, forced by Soglo to resign on November 27 and November 29, 1965 respectively; Apithy fled to Paris and Ahomadegbe was removed combining arrested or jailed and fled the country across the two men and the sequence that followed.
RESEARCHED NAME
Key figures
Sourou Migan Apithy (president forced to resign November 27, fled to Paris)
Justin Ahomadegbe (vice president and head of government, resigned November 29)
Christophe Soglo (general and army chief who forced the resignations)
Tahirou Congacou (National Assembly president made interim head of state)
Sources
After repeatedly encouraging the political forces to agree to dialogue, Soglo again overthrew the government on 27 November 1965 and served as President of Benin under a military government until 17 December 1967; he had earlier taken power on 28 October 1963, then given it up on 25 January 1964 to let Apithy become president, before the feuds among Apithy and other leaders drove this second intervention.
Apithy served as the second president of Dahomey between 25 January 1964 and 27 November 1965, when he was overthrown by Christophe Soglo after infighting among the members of the government, and after this event he fled to Paris for the first time, returning to Cotonou only after the 1970 coup.
Economic problems, social issues, strikes, and irreversible tensions led to the resignation of Sourou-Migan Apithy on 27 November 1965 and Justin Ahomadegbe's two days later, after which National Assembly president Tahirou Congacou took on the powers of the president of the Republic on 29 November and formed a restricted cabinet of five members, before Soglo, dissatisfied with Congacou's actions, removed him on 22 December 1965.
A Beninese constitutional history records that the disagreements between Apithy and Ahomadegbe were finally arbitrated by General Soglo, that on 27 November 1965 Apithy had to resign, Ahomadegbe held the interim until 29 November, and then National Assembly president Tahirou Congacou held it until 22 December, when General Soglo took power directly.
SOURCE REVIEWEDDigitheque de materiaux juridiques et politiques, Universite de Perpignan, Constitution of Dahomey 1964open source ↗
Editorial Note
Paired record care: this November 29 record is Soglo forcing out the Apithy and Ahomadegbe coalition; the companion record 1965-12-22 covers Soglo deposing the interim Congacou and taking power outright three weeks later, and the two must not be merged. Date and fate structure: Apithy resigned November 27 and fled to Paris (the fled the country element), Ahomadegbe resigned November 29 (the dataset's date), and the combined dataset fate of arrested or jailed plus fled reflects the two leaders and the sequence; the arrest element attached more fully to these men in the later 1972 coup, noted here. Arc links: back to Soglo's first coup of 1963-10-28 against Maga (batch 15) and forward to the December 22 companion.
Cross-Reference
Datasets agree. At least two of the three reference datasets we check against carry this event, and none of them disagrees about its date or its result.
Identifiers for finding this same event in the other datasets:
Coup Atlas research identifies the target as: President Sourou Migan Apithy and Vice President Justin Ahomadegbe, forced by Soglo to resign on November 27 and November 29, 1965 respectively; Apithy fled to Paris and Ahomadegbe was removed combining arrested or jailed and fled the country across the two men and the sequence that followed..
Baseline coding: Incumbent executive removed from power. Recorded leader fate: deposed; arrested or jailed; fled the country. The baseline file does not name individual targets; researched names are kept in a separate layer.
Baseline Dataset Citation
Cline Center Coup d’État Project Dataset, v2.2.2
Peyton, Buddy, Joseph Bajjalieh, Michael Martin, and Andrea Gerald. 2026. Cline Center Coup d’État Project Dataset. Cline Center for Advanced Social Research. V.2.2.2. February 17. University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. doi: 10.13012/B2IDB-9651987_V10
“Dahomey President Ousted by Assembly,” November 28, 1965
“Two Dahomey Leaders Ousted by head of Army,” November 30, 1965
“Fatal to Governments,” by Alfred Friendly Jr., December 19, 1967
This is the citation trail carried by the baseline dataset, grouped by outlet and rejoined from the line-wrapped original. Coup Atlas has not independently re-checked every document; read the original before citing a specific claim. URLs the import damaged beyond safe repair are shown as plain text and listed in citations-report.md. How this list is built →