Word: shagari
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...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...
...Radio Lagos was brief and enigmatic. Claiming to speak on behalf of the country's armed forces, Brigadier General Sana Abacha of the Nigerian army declared that he and his colleagues had "decided to effect a change in the leadership of the government" of President Shehu Shagari, 58. "This task," said Abacha, "has just been completed." The general then announced that all political parties were being banned and communications with the outside world suspended, and that a dusk-to-dawn curfew was being imposed. Only four months after Nigeria's 25.4 million voters re-elected Shagari...
...immediate confirmation of Abacha's announcement was possible because of the communications cutoff. But diplomatic sources in Paris said that Shagari, most of his Cabinet ministers and some members of the 544-seat National Assembly were under arrest. It was unclear whether Abacha, identified as the commander of an armored brigade in the capital, Lagos, had acted on his own or with the support of other commanders...
...federal or state contracts are awarded without payment of a "mobilization fee," which can amount to 40% of the value of the contract. It is widely believed that some of the political chieftains who supported Shagari and his ruling National Party have benefited from the largesse...
...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...