David Williams - President and Power in Nigeria: The Life of Shehu Shagari

FRANK CASS AND COMPANY LIMITED

Published 2016 by Routledge

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First issued in paperback 2016

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor and Francis Group, an informa business

Copyright 1982 David Williams

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Williams, David

President and power in Nigeria: the life of Shehu

Shagari.

1. Shagari, Shehu 2. StatementNigeria

Biography

I. Title

996.9050924DT515.6.S/

ISBN 13: 978-1-138-99524-6 (pbk)

ISBN 13: 978-0-7146-4036-5 (hbk)

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To the memory of

ALHAJI SIR ABUBAKAR TAFAWA BALEWA

Prime Minister of the Federation of Nigeria

and

ALHAJI SIR AHMADU BELLO,

SARDAUNA OF SOKOTO

Premier of the Northern Region of Nigeria

President Shehu Shagari.

There has been a considerable growth in studies of the Third World in recent years. However, one area where scarcity still prevails, is the biographies of leaders and statesmen of large, populous developing countries. Apart from the theme of personal struggle through difficult conditions inherent in them, accounts of the experiences of these leaders can vividly portray the effort to modernize economies, evolve civilian rule and representative government and, in societies like that of Nigeria with complex ethnic compositions, establish the Federal principle as a basis of national unity. I believe this multi-dimensional effort to be of crucial importance for the stability and social progress of the Third World countries and also for narrowing the gap between them and the longer established political societies of the industrialized world.

I am glad that we have now a biography of Alhaji Shehu Usman Aliyu Shagari. I have had the pleasure of meeting President Shehu Shagari on several important occasions, including the Summit Conferences of the Organization of African Unity and the one convened at Cancun in 1981 to stimulate a more purposeful dialogue between the North and the South. President Shehu Shagaris forceful address to the 35th General Assembly of the United Nations and his contributions to discussions of the great issues of our time showed his profound personal dedication to the aims of peace and progress and his keen understanding of the need for a rational accommodation of diverse interests which alone can yield enduring agreements. I would recommend a reading of his biography to all who are interested in Nigeria, in Africa and in the vast endeavour now taking place in the Third World to make up for centuries of neglect and underdevelopment. President Shehu Shagari has, of course, not yet concluded his high political mission, but even an interim presentation like this one tells us more than academic expositions can about the conditions of an important and influential country like Nigeria. The events described in this biography have a significance far beyond that countrys borders.

Kurt Waldheim

The man who leads the worlds fourth largest democracy is perhaps the least well known, outside his own country, of any statesman of his rank. Even inside his country he was, until his election as President in 1979, largely unknown; he was variously described as of humble origin or as a Fulani feudalist. This book is an attempt to present Nigerias President as an individual who has had a long and varied public career; not as a representative of a party, of a dass, or of an ethnic group.

It is an interim presentation, although I hope it does not look like a hasty one. In early 1982 he is still only 56, and has many years of service to his country ahead. Nor do I claim that the book is a complete account of a career which has been far fuller than is generally realised. It does not attempt, either, to be a political, social or economic history of Nigeria in the years since Shehu Shagari first appeared on the national scene in 1954; that history is already well covered by numerous works, to many of which I am indebted. Events are recorded only because of their importance for the subject of the biography; although I hope that I give enough background to explain the significance of these events, not only for him but for Nigeria. Perhaps I should add that I have myself followed that countrys fortunes closely since 1949, when I became editor of the weekly West Africa.

My thanks are due, above all, to the President himself. For some eighteen months he has given his time to me generously-though never in official hours, a restriction about which he has been punctilious. I have interviewed him in his Lagos State House, in his own home in Sokoto, on his farm at Shagari, in the house of his High Commissioner in London in Kensington Palace Gardens. He has talked to me in the Presidential Lodge in Yankari Game Reserve in Bauchi State. There the then Bauchi State Commissioner for Trade, Industry and Tourism, Alhaji Ibrahim Magaji Abubakar, and his officers ensured my comfort.

For much of his earlier life, Alhaji Shehu Shagari himself, or his papers, are virtually the only source for an author who has no research team. He has given me access to his personal papers and has himself patiently filled in many gaps. Two of the men who might have given the most valuable information about him were murdered in 1966 - Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, Nigerias first Prime Minister, in whose governments Alhaji Shehu served for six years, and Sir Ahmadu Bello, Sardauna of Sokoto, his party leader for many years. This, therefore, has some characteristics of autobiography. Yet, while he has helped me greatly in supplying and checking dates, names, places and the like, the President has refrained from comment on my judgments and has not himself suggested that any event should be emphasised or that anything should be played down or omitted. This makes him an ideal subject; but it makes this, too, a book for whose substance and for whose deficiencies, of which I am well aware, I alone am responsible.

My thanks are due secondly to Alhaji Shehu Malami, Sarkin Sudan, Wumo. Although a personal friend of the President, he plays no direct part in Nigerian politics. Without his generous sponsorship this book would not have been possible. The President insisted that this must be a purely private enterprise, for which the Nigerian taxpayer should have no responsibility. Without Alhaji Shehu Malamis constant assistance, including the provision of transport and accommodation in Nigeria, I could not have done my work. In all this he, I know, is concerned only that a great leader should receive some of the recognition which is his due, and which so far has been given him inadequately. I am grateful, too, for assistance from West Africa Publishing Company, of which I am a director.