Ahmad Zaidi Adruce bin Muhammed Noor (Jawi: أحمد زيدي أدروس بن محمد نور‎; 29 March 1924 – 5 December 2000) was a Malaysian politician who served as the 5th Yang di-Pertua Negeri (Governor) of Sarawak.

[3] Ahmad Zaidi was born on 29 March 1924 to Muhammad Noor (father) and Siti Saadiah (mother) on a small boat on the Rajang River near Kampung Semop, Daro, Sarawak.

At age 12 he passed his standard seven exam with exemplary marks – which at the time was an achievement far beyond what was expected of a young man born and raised in Sarawak.

In November 1940, Ahmad Zaidi joined the Sultan Idris College in Tanjung Malim, Perak, where he studied until the Japanese invasion in 1941, when he was forced to flee to Singapore.

He did not complete his veterinary training when the war ended in 1945 and was instead pulled into fighting against the Dutch in Indonesia, where he witnessed first-hand the early days of the Indonesian National Revolution.

In 1949, the British awarded Ahmad Zaidi a four-year Colonial Development and Welfare scholarship to further his studies at the Robert Gordons Technical College in Aberdeen before he was enrolled to the University of Edinburgh in the United Kingdom.

[citation needed] Ahmad Zaidi was opposed to colonialist ideology, and the experiences of being discriminated while in the United Kingdom did little to endear his feelings towards the colonial government that ruled over his people.

In the transition phase towards the formation of a new government, he received insider information that some of the expatriates who worked under the colonial administration preferred that he be eliminated for fear of revenge if Ahmad Zaidi became in control.

[citation needed] He was then abducted from Sarawak by his sympathizers and later went into self-exile in Indonesia until he was given amnesty by the Malaysian government in 1969, a move strongly supported by Tun Abdul Rahman Ya'kub, where the latter was a federal minister at the time.

Ahmad Zaidi later developed good relationship with Harris Salleh, one of the leaders of the Sabah People's United Front (BERJAYA party).

He held the office for 15 years, the longest-serving governor in any Malaysian state without a hereditary ruler (in consecutive terms from a single appointment).

[citation needed] In 1974, while Ahmad Zaidi was taking a break in a family house in Bandung, Indonesia, he had a blackout and fractured his lumbar spine (lower backbone).

[4] Ahmad Zaidi Adruce served three terms before passing on peacefully on 5 December 2000, leaving behind a lasting legacy as a true nationalist and as his people's first scholar.