The Republic of Benin,formerly Dahomey (1960–1975), is a
country in West Africa. It is bordered by Togo to the west, Nigeria to the
east, Burkina Faso to the north-west, and Niger to the north-east. The majority
of its population lives on the small southern coastline of the Bight of Benin,
part of the Gulf of Guinea in the northernmost tropical portion of the Atlantic
Ocean. The capital of Benin is Porto-Novo, but the seat of government is in
Cotonou, the country's largest city and economic capital. Benin covers an area
of 114,763 square kilometers (44,310 sq mi)[3] and its population in 2018 was
estimated to be approximately 11.49 million.
Benin is a tropical
nation, highly dependent on agriculture, and is a large exporter of cotton and
palm oil. Substantial employment and income arise from subsistence farming.
The official language of Benin is French, with several
indigenous languages such as Fon, Bariba, Yoruba and Dendi also being commonly
spoken. The largest religious group in Benin is Roman Catholicism, followed
closely by Islam, Vodun (commonly referred to as Voodoo outside the country)
and Protestantism.
Benin is a member of the United Nations, the African Union,
the Economic Community of West African States, the Organisation of Islamic
Cooperation, the South Atlantic Peace and Cooperation Zone, La Francophonie,
the Community of Sahel–Saharan States, the African Petroleum Producers
Association and the Niger Basin Authority.
Little is known of Benin's early history. From the 17th to
the 19th century, the main political entities in the area were the Kingdom of
Dahomey, along with the city-state of Porto-Novo, and a large area with many
different nations to the north. This region was referred to as the Slave Coast
from as early as the 17th century due to the large number of enslaved people
who were shipped to the New World during the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. After
enslavement was abolished, France took over the country and renamed it French
Dahomey. In 1960, Dahomey gained full independence from France. In 1991, it was
replaced by the current multi-party Republic of Benin.
During the colonial period and at independence, the country
was known as Dahomey. On 30 November 1975, it was renamed to Benin,] after the
body of water on which the country lies—the Bight of Benin. This had been named
by Europeans after the Benin Empire in present-day Nigeria. The country of
Benin has no connection to Benin City in modern Nigeria, nor to the Benin
bronzes.
The new name, Benin, was chosen for its neutrality. Dahomey
was the name of the former Fon Kingdom of Dahomey, which was limited to most of
the southern third of the present country and therefore did not represent
Porto-Novo (a rival to Yoruba state in the south), central Benin (which is also
dominated by the Yoruba), the multi-ethnic northwestern sector Atakora, nor the
Bariba Kingdom of Borgu, which covered the northeastern district.
HISTORY
The current country of Benin combines three areas which had
distinctly different political systems and ethnicities prior to french colonial
control. Before 1700, there were a few important city-states along the coast
(primarily of the Aja ethnic group, but also including Yoruba and Gbe peoples)
and a mass of tribal regions inland (composed of Bariba, Mahi, Gedevi, and
Kabye peoples). The Oyo Empire, located primarily to the east of modern Benin,
was the most significant large-scale military force in the region. It regularly
conducted raids and exacted tribute from the coastal kingdoms and the tribal region
.The situation changed in the 1600s and early 1700s as the Kingdom of Dahomey,
consisting mostly of Fon people, was founded on the Abomey plateau and began
taking over areas along the coast.[19] By 1727, king Agaja of the Kingdom of
Dahomey had conquered the coastal cities of Allada and Whydah, but it had
become a tributary of the Oyo empire and did not directly attack the Oyo allied
city-state of Porto-Novo..
The rise of the kingdom of Dahomey, the rivalry between the
kingdom and the city of Porto-Novo, and the continued tribal politics of the
northern region, persisted into the colonial and post-colonial periods.
The Dahomey Kingdom was known for its culture and
traditions. Young boys were often apprenticed to older soldiers, and taught the
kingdom's military customs until they were old enough to join the army.[ Dahomey was also famous for instituting an
elite female soldier corps, called Ahosi, i.e. the king's wives, or Mino,
"our mothers" in the Fon language Fongbe, and known by many Europeans
as the Dahomean Amazons. This emphasis on military preparation and achievement
earned Dahomey the nickname of "black Sparta" from European observers
and 19th-century explorers such as Sir Richard Burton.[23]
Early Portuguese colonization and the slave trade
The kings of Dahomey sold their war captives into
transatlantic slavery. [ They also had a
practice of killing war captives in a ceremony known as the Annual Customs. By
about 1750, the King of Dahomey was earning an estimated £250,000 per year by selling
African captives to European slave-traders.
Though the leaders of Dahomey appear to have initially
resisted the slave trade, it flourished in the region of Dahomey for almost
three hundred years, beginning in 1472 with a trade agreement with Portuguese
merchants. The area was named the "Slave Coast" because of this
flourishing trade. Court protocols, which demanded that a portion of war
captives from the kingdom's many battles be decapitated, decreased the number
of enslaved people exported from the area. The number went from 102,000 people
per decade in the 1780s to 24,000 per decade by the 1860s.[26] The decline was
partly due to the Slave Trade Act 1807 banning the trans-Atlantic slave trade
by Britain in 1808, followed by other countries.[25] This decline continued
until 1885, when the last slave ship departed from the coast of the modern
Benin Republic bound for Brazil in South America, which had yet to abolish
slavery. The capital's name Porto-Novo is of Portuguese origin, meaning
"New Port". It was originally developed as a port for the slave
trade.
French colonial period
By the middle of the nineteenth century, Dahomey had begun
to weaken and lose its status as the regional power. This enabled the French to
take over the area in 1892. In 1899, the French included the land called French
Dahomey within the larger French West Africa colonial region.
In 1958, France granted autonomy to the Republic of Dahomey,
and full independence on 1 August 1960, which is celebrated each year as
Independence Day, a national holiday.
The president who led the country to independence was Hubert Maga
Post-colonial period
For the next twelve years after 1960, ethnic strife
contributed to a period of turbulence. There were several coups and regime
changes, with the figures of Hubert Maga, Sourou Apithy, Justin Ahomadégbé, and
Émile Derlin Zinsou dominating; the first three each represented a different
area and ethnicity of the country. These three agreed to form a Presidential
Council after violence marred the 1970 elections.
On 7 May 1972, Maga ceded power to Ahomadégbé. On 26 October
1972, Lt. Col. Mathieu Kérékou overthrew the ruling triumvirate, becoming
president and stating that the country would not "burden itself by copying
foreign ideology, and wants neither Capitalism, Communism, nor Socialism".
On 30 November 1974 however, he announced that the country was officially
Marxist, under control of the Military Council of the Revolution (CMR), which
nationalized the petroleum industry and banks. On 30 November 1975, he renamed
the country to the People's Republic of Benin.
The CMR was dissolved in 1979, and Kérékou arranged show
elections in which he was the only allowed candidate. Establishing relations
with China, North Korea, and Libya, he put nearly all businesses and economic
activities under state control, causing foreign investment in Benin to dry
up.[32] Kérékou attempted to reorganize education, pushing his own aphorisms
such as "Poverty is not a fatality", resulting in a mass exodus of
teachers, along with numerous other professionals. The regime financed itself
by contracting to take nuclear waste, first from the Soviet Union and later
from France.
In 1980, Kérékou converted to Islam and changed his first
name to Ahmed. He changed his name back after claiming to be a born-again
Christian. In 1989, riots broke out when the regime did not have enough money
to pay its army. The banking system collapsed. Eventually, Kérékou renounced
Marxism, and a convention forced Kérékou to release political prisoners and
arrange elections. Marxism–Leninism was
abolished as the nation's form of government.[33]
The country's name was officially changed to the Republic of
Benin on 1 March 1990, after the newly formed government's constitution was
completed.
In a 1991 election, Kérékou lost to Nicéphore Soglo. Kérékou
returned to power after winning the 1996 vote. In 2001, a closely fought
election resulted in Kérékou winning another term, after which his opponents
claimed election irregularities.
In 1999, Kérékou issued a national apology for the
substantial role that Africans had played in the Atlantic slave trade.
Kérékou and former president Soglo did not run in the 2006
elections, as both were barred by the constitution's restrictions on age and
total terms of candidates.
On 5 March 2006, an election was held that was considered
free and fair. It resulted in a runoff between Yayi Boni and Adrien Houngbédji.
The runoff election was held on 19 March and was won by Boni, who assumed
office on 6 April. The success of the fair multi-party elections in Benin won
praise internationally. Boni was reelected in 2011, taking 53.18% of the vote
in the first round—enough to avoid a runoff election. He was the first
president to win an election without a runoff since the restoration of
democracy in 1991.
In the March 2016 presidential elections, in which Boni Yayi
was barred by the constitution from running for a third term, businessman
Patrice Talon won the second round with 65.37% of the vote, defeating
investment banker and former Prime Minister Lionel Zinsou. Talon was sworn in
on 6 April 2016. Speaking on the same
day that the Constitutional Court confirmed the results, Talon said that he
would "first and foremost tackle constitutional reform", discussing
his plan to limit presidents to a single term of five years in order to combat
"complacency". He also said that he planned to slash the size of the
government from 28 to 16 members.
RELIGION
In the 2013 census, 48.5% of the population of Benin were
Christian (25.5% Roman Catholic, 6.7% Celestial Church of Christ, 3.4%
Methodist, 12.9% other Christian denominations), 27.7% were Muslim, 11.6%
practiced Vodun, 2.6% practiced other local traditional religions, 2.6%
practiced other religions, and 5.8% claimed no religious affiliation. A more recent government survey conducted by
the Demographic and Health Surveys Program in 2011-2012 indicated that
Christianity had increased to 57.5% of the population (with Catholics making up
33.9%, Methodists 3.0%, Celestials 6.2% and other Christians 14.5%), while
Muslims had declined to 22.8%.[
Traditional religions include local animistic religions in
the Atakora (Atakora and Donga provinces), and Vodun and Orisha veneration
among the Yoruba and Tado peoples in the center and south of the nation. The
town of Ouidah on the central coast is the spiritual center of Beninese Vodun.
Today the two largest religions are Christianity, followed
throughout the south and center of Benin and in Otammari country in the
Atakora, and Islam, introduced by the Songhai Empire and Hausa merchants, and
now followed throughout Alibori, Borgou and Donga provinces, as well as among
the Yoruba (who also follow Christianity). Many, however, continue to hold
Vodun and Orisha beliefs and have incorporated the pantheon of Vodun and Orisha
into Christianity. The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, a sect originating in the
19th century, is also present in a significant minority.Source wikipaedia