Word: shagari
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Africa never ceases to amaze." So wrote V.S. Naipaul in A Bend in the River, and last week, true to the novelist's assessment, Africa amazed again. As recently as a fortnight ago, Nigerian President Alhaji Shehu Shagari, 58, was being hailed as the enlightened leader of black Africa's most populous and, in many ways, most promising democracy. Several days later, he was under detention in Lagos, while Major General Mohammed Buhari, 41, organizer of a coup that deposed Shagari, was proclaiming to his countrymen that the armed forces had saved the nation from "total collapse...
Thus the Dec. 31 coup that toppled Shagari dealt a blow to the hopes of a black Africa that had looked to Nigeria as a trail blazer for democratization. The fact that Shagari could not retain power, even though he was overwhehningly re-elected last August, highlighted the pattern of failure that has plagued black Africa in the quarter-century since most of its nations became independent. The problems of Nigeria are, by and large, those that afflict the entire continent: abject poverty, rampant corruption, gross mismanagement, tribal enmity, uncontrolled population growth. If, in spite of its assets, Nigeria cannot...
...military rule and a civil war that had taken at least 1 million lives, the nation known as the "African Giant" had in 1979 painstakingly embarked on its second attempt at democratic government, this time under a federal constitution closely modeled on that of the U.S. The mild-mannered Shagari, a Muslim from the north and a former schoolteacher, had been elected President and re-elected last August, winning 47% of the popular vote and at least 25% of the ballots in 16 of the country's 19 states...
...When Shagari first took office, Nigeria was riding the crest of the oil boom. Its wells were producing up to $26 billion a year. The affluence led the government to press ahead with several expensive development projects, including the construction of a new capital city at Abuja, 325 miles to the northeast of Lagos. Shagari initially promised an end to corruption, but he soon learned that his room for maneuver was limited by the narrower aims of the northern political barons, whose support had ensured his election. Fueled by the oil boom, corruption flourished. Explains a newspaper editor...
...Shagari, a former schoolteacher, was well aware of the economic mess and intended to use his mandate to do something about it. Only two days before the coup declaration, Shagari went on the air with a budget speech announcing tough austerity measures, including a reduction of state subsidies on a wide range of goods and services. In the confusion and uncertainty following the latest military announcement, no one could say whether Shagari's attempts at reform had failed to go far enough to satisfy some of the generals-or whether those measures had perhaps gone...