Sylvanus Olympio

Shot on 13 January 1963 in Lome by ex-French army mutineers; the president of Togo was the first African head of state killed in a coup.

Overview

Olympio, an economist trained in the City of London, had led Togo to independence from French trusteeship in 1960 as a genuine multiparty republic, and had refused to absorb into the Togolese army the French colonial veterans who had fought for France in Indochina and Algeria and then been demobilized. A group of these soldiers, among them the young Gnassingbe Eyadema, seized him as he sought refuge at the United States embassy gate, and shot him. Nicolas Grunitzky was installed, then removed by the Eyadema coup of 1967 that began one of Africa longest military rules. Olympio murder set the coup tradition of the first independence decade and remains the founding wound of Togolese politics, contested between his family and the Eyadema dynasty to this day.