On October 26, 1972 Commander Mathieu Kerekou seized power in Dahomey in a military coup that abolished the rotating three-man Presidential Council, ending the country's long experiment in shared civilian rule and beginning Kerekou's eighteen-year reign, which would remake the state as Marxist-Leninist Benin. Since 1970, in an attempt to contain the bitter regional and personal rivalry among the veteran politicians Hubert Maga, Sourou-Migan Apithy, and Justin Ahomadegbe-Tometin, Dahomey had been governed by a Presidential Council in which the three rotated as head of state in two-year terms; earlier in 1972 Maga had handed the chair to Ahomadegbe. On October 26, 1972 the armed forces under Kerekou overthrew this arrangement, suspended the constitution, and dissolved both the National Assembly and the Presidential Council.
The three council members were arrested and detained. Kerekou at first proclaimed only nationalism, but in November 1974 he declared the state Marxist-Leninist, renamed the country the People's Republic of Benin in 1975, nationalized the banks and petroleum industry, and established a single ruling party.
Researched Details
Researched
Independent research, added record by record. Hover any label for what it means.
Target identified in Coup Atlas research: The rotating Presidential Council (its sitting chairman Justin Ahomadegbe-Tometin, alongside Hubert Maga and Sourou-Migan Apithy), overthrown on October 26, 1972; the council members were arrested and detained.
RESEARCHED NAME
Key figures
Mathieu Kerekou (commander and coup leader, future long-ruling president)
Justin Ahomadegbe-Tometin (sitting council chairman deposed)
Hubert Maga and Sourou-Migan Apithy (other council members detained)
Sources
Kerekou seized power in Dahomey in a military coup on 26 October 1972, ending a system of government in which three members of a presidential council were to rotate power, earlier in the year Maga having handed over power to Justin Ahomadegbe; during his first two years Kerekou expressed only nationalism, but on 30 November 1974 he announced the adoption of Marxism-Leninism, and the country was renamed from Dahomey to the People's Republic of Benin.
On 26 October 1972 the Armed Forces led by Commander Mathieu Kerekou overthrew the government in a coup d'etat, suspended the constitution, and dissolved both the National Assembly and the Presidential Council, and on 30 November 1972 released the keynote address of the New Politics of National Independence.
SOURCE REVIEWEDWikipedia, People's Republic of Beninopen source ↗
A list of coups records that on October 26, 1972 Mathieu Kerekou overthrew Justin Ahomadegbe-Tometin, the entry marking the end of the Dahomeyan rotating-council arrangement and the start of the Kerekou era.
SOURCE REVIEWEDWikipedia, List of coups and coup attempts by countryopen source ↗
Kerekou's first year in power was marked by purges from the state apparatus, and he condemned and sometimes executed various representatives of the former political regime, before proclaiming Marxism-Leninism at Abomey in November 1974 and creating the People's Revolutionary Party of Benin as the sole legal party.
SOURCE REVIEWEDWikipedia, People's Republic of Beninopen source ↗
Editorial Note
Arc closer: this October 26, 1972 coup CLOSES the long Dahomey saga running through the dataset, connecting to Soglo's 1963 and 1965 coups (batches 16, 17), Kouandete's 1967 coup against Soglo (batch 19), and Kouandete's 1969 coup against Zinsou (batch 21); the rotating Presidential Council of Maga, Apithy, and Ahomadegbe was the arrangement that had followed those upheavals, and Kerekou's coup ended it, beginning eighteen years of stable one-party rule. Fate coding: the three council members were arrested and detained, matching the dataset's arrested or jailed fate; the sitting chairman Ahomadegbe is treated as the primary deposed leader, with Maga and Apithy also detained. Arc forward: Kerekou declared Marxism-Leninism in 1974, renamed the country Benin in 1975, survived the 1977 mercenary Operation Shrimp, and ruled until 1990 before losing and later regaining the presidency by election, all separate later events.
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: The rotating Presidential Council (its sitting chairman Justin Ahomadegbe-Tometin, alongside Hubert Maga and Sourou-Migan Apithy), overthrown on October 26, 1972; the council members were arrested and detained..
Baseline coding: Incumbent executive removed from power. Recorded leader fate: deposed; arrested or jailed. 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
Named in the baseline source document; no article citation was recorded.
BBC
“Benin profile - Timeline,” November 2, 2022
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 →