Hubert Maga

Hubert Coutoucou Maga was born on the tenth of August 1916 in Parakou, in the north of French Dahomey, to a family of modest means. His mother belonged to the Bariba people of northeastern Dahomey, and his father was Voltaic, of the Mossi people of Upper Volta (today Burkina Faso). Raised at first in the Islamic faith, he later embraced Roman Catholicism — an uncommon path for a northerner of his day — and he counted himself a descendant of the royal line of Borgou.

Schooled at Parakou, Bohicon, Abomey and the Victor Ballot School in Porto-Novo, Maga completed his training at the École Normale William Ponty in Senegal, where he befriended Hamani Diori, the future president of Niger. He became a teacher at Natitingou in 1935 and rose to school director, earning the trust of the northern communities who would become his political base.

Elected to Dahomey's territorial assembly in 1947 and to the French National Assembly in 1951, Maga built the Dahomeyan Democratic Rally and served as premier from 1959. When Dahomey won its independence from France on the first of August 1960, he was raised to the presidency, and was formally elected on the eleventh of December that year — the first head of state of the new nation.

His rule was cut short by a military coup in October 1963, and later years brought imprisonment and, at last, amnesty and a dignified retirement from public life. He died in Cotonou on the eighth of May 2000. May Hubert Maga be honored as the founding president who gave a young nation its first sovereign voice.