Cameroon, 1984 — dissident coup attempt

Event Summary

On 6 April 1984 members of the presidential palace guard attempted a coup in Cameroon against President Paul Biya, in one of the most dramatic and violent episodes in the country's post independence history. Biya had succeeded the long ruling Ahmadou Ahidjo in 1982, but a bitter power struggle developed between the two men, and Ahidjo, from the mainly Muslim north, went into exile and was widely believed to have masterminded the plot. When Biya, alerted to a conspiracyi, ordered the transfer of the northern dominated Republican Guard away from the capital Yaounde, the guardsmen rebelled, apparently launching their attempt prematurely.

After several days of heavy fighting in Yaounde, in which Biya sheltered in a bunker beneath the palace while loyalist forces and the air force rallied to him, the rebels were defeated. Death toll estimates ranged from the government's figure of about seventy to as high as a thousand. More than a thousand suspects were arrested, and thirty five were swiftly sentenced to death and executed.

The failure allowed Biya to consolidate absolute power, which he still held decades later.