Word: shagari
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...were the questions being asked in the world of Big Oil. Breathless dispatches out of Lagos, Nigeria, hinted at an erupting major scandal. On one side were the Royal Dutch/Shell Group, Mobil and Gulf Oil. Arrayed against them was the ten-month-old civilian government of President Alhaji Shehu Shagari, which seemed to be charging that the oil companies had somehow or other tricked it out of 183 million bbl. of high-quality Nigerian crude. The government appeared to demand that the oil be either returned or paid for. The situation took on added importance because Nigeria...
...fact there was far less to the diverting little drama than met the eye. Though front-page stories in the U.S. anxiously warned that the action by Nigeria had dealt a serious blow to oil companies and consumers alike, the Shagari government had done nothing of the kind. The stillborn scandal really amounted to something considerably different from what the overeager press reporting in Lagos and the U.S. implied...
...Shagari's pragmatism could spell success for Nigeria's reborn democracy, if he can curb the excesses of his party followers, who finished strongly in races for the federal senate and state assemblies. But it might also spell disaster if he permits the country to fall back into the fractiousness of the past. Says a Western diplomat in Lagos: "A lot of people have their fingers crossed on this...
Last September Obasanjo ended the nation's twelve-year-old ban on political activity, and more than 55 parties exploded into noisy life. But only five, among them Shagari's National Party of Nigeria (N.P.N.), could generate a following wide enough to qualify their presidential candidates. The freewheeling and occasionally violent campaign that followed persuaded some Nigerians that the experiment with democracy was premature. Said a professor: "There are two kinds of people here, the pessimist who says civilian rule will fall apart before it begins in October, and the optimist who says that it will fall apart...
...spellbinder with crowds, Shagari, a chain-smoking, onetime science teacher, edged his two main rivals, who hinted after the election that they might challenge the results. The two were Yoruba Chieftain Obafemi Awolowo, a major architect of Nigeria's independence, and Nnamdi Azikiwe, an Ibo leader who was the nonelected President during the brief parliamentary republic. In the campaign, Shagari emphasized his experience as a minister of finance, education and other departments in previous regimes. Though once a leader of an organization that advocated "national unity" under Hausa domination, he picked an Ibo running mate. Moreover, he managed...