This article is about a person whose name includes a patronymic. The article properly refers to the person by their given name, Abiye, and not as Abebe.
LijAbiye Abebe (Amharic: አብይ አበበ; born 1917 – 23 November 1974) was an Ethiopian politician and son-in-law of Emperor Haile Selassie.
Biography
Son of Liqa Mequas Abebe Atnaf Seggad, Abiye was born 1918 in Addis Ababa[2] as a Lij.[citation needed] He attended the Holeta Military Academy.[3] In the 1940s and 1950s he was Minister of Defence, and later served as Minister of Justice and Minister of the Interior.[4] He chaired the High National Security Commission during the Ethiopian Revolution until his arrest by the Derg on 16 July 1974.[5] Lt. General Abiye was serving as Chief of the General Staff when he was arrested.
According to John Spencer, when Prime Minister Aklilu Habte-Wold sought to resign his post in 1973, he suggested to the Emperor that he be replaced by General Abiye. Other sources indicate that Aklilu Habte-Wold's rival Prince Asrate Kassa was the person who put General Abiye forward as a fellow aristocrat. However Abiye consented to becoming Prime Minister only if his nomination, and those of his cabinet, were approved by the Ethiopian parliament, a condition Emperor Haile Selassie found unacceptable. As a result, Haile Selassie decided to appoint Endelkachew Makonnen Prime Minister instead.[6] Abiye was one of 60 former government officials executed the night of 22–23 November at Akaki Central Prison by the Derg.[7]
General Abiye was married three times. At Addis Ababa, on 26 April 1942, he married Princess Tsehai of Ethiopia who died in childbirth a year later. After this marriage, Lt. General Abiye Abebe was accorded the dignities and protocol rank of the Emperor's son-in-law, even after he remarried. In 1946, married Woizero Amarech Nasibu, daughter of Nasibu Zeamanuel, and then in 1970 to Woizero Tsige Aynalem, his widow, with whom he had three children, Phebe, Berkinesh, and Abiye.[8]
Career history
Brigadier-General (24 April 1942)
Governor-General of Wollega province (1942–1943)[2]
^In 1959 the legislatively-elected post of Chief Executive was replaced by the imperially-appointed office of Chief Administrator. On 15 November 1962 Eritrea became an ordinary province of Ethiopia, and the office was in turn replaced with that of Governor-General.