1980 Upper Voltan coup d'état up against the President, which caused the 1966 Upper Voltan coup d'état, in which Lieutenant Colonel Sangoulé Lamizana took power. This marked the beginning of a long era of military rule in Upper Volta and later Burkina Faso. Lamizana would go on to rule the country as a military dictator until the Upper Voltan presidential election in 1978, when he was elected as the leader of a civilian regime. During the 1970s, the Lamizana government faced many problems, among them continued opposition from the trade unions, the rise of new political opposition groups, a strong Sahel drought, increasing desertification, and
French Upper Volta the Mossi people were able to defend their religious beliefs and social structure against forcible attempts to convert them to Islam by Muslims from the northwest. When the French arrived and claimed the area in 1896, Mossi resistance ended with the capture of their capital at Ouagadougou. In 1919, certain provinces from Côte d'Ivoire were united into a separate colony called the Upper Volta in the French West Africa federation. In 1932, the new colony was dismembered in a move to economise; it was reconstituted in 1937 as an administrative division called the Upper Coast. After World War II, the