ORIGIN
The name Nigeria was created from a combination of the words Niger and Area, taken from the River Niger running through Nigeria . This name was coined by Flora Shaw, the future wife of Lord Frederick Lugard, a British colonial administrator, in the late 19th century. Nigeria is an agglomeration of various ethnic groups within the country’s present area to form a strong, sovereign Nation. This agglomeration was carried out by the British Government, the ruling colonial power in the area at the time. In 1914, the area was formally united as the Colony and Protectorate of Nigeria. Administratively, Nigeria was divided into the northern and southern provinces and the Lagos colony. Today, Nigeria has been further divided to comprise 36 states and a Federal Capital Territory .
We could also mention that Portuguese explorers were the first Europeans to begin trade in Nigeria, and called the port: Lagos after the Portuguese town of Lagos, in Algarve, a name that has remained till date, with Lagos being Nigeria’s most populous city and the commercial nerve centre of the nation.
Currently, Nigeria is the most populous country in Africa and the eighth most populous country in the world, and with a population of over 140 million
OUR FEDERAL GOVERNMENT
Nigeria is a Federal Republic, which means it is made up of a group of states under a central government and power is shared at both the state and national levels. The Government structure is modeled after the United States , with executive power exercised by the president and with overtones of the Westminster (British) System model evident in the adoption of Bicameral Legislation comprising upper and lower houses. The current president of Nigeria is Umaru Musa Yar'Adua who was elected in 2007. The president presides as both Chief of State and Head of Government and is elected by popular vote to a maximum of two four-year terms. The president's power is checked (monitored) by a Senate and a House of Representatives, which are combined in a bicameral body called the National Assembly. The Senate is a 109-seat body with three members from each of the 36 states and one from the capital region of Abuja ; members are elected by popular vote to four-year terms. The House contains 360 seats and the number of seats per state is determined by population.
OUR GEOGRAPHY
Nigeria is located in western Africa on the Gulf of Guinea and has a total area of 923,768 km² (356,669 mi²), making it the world's 32nd-largest country. It is comparable in size to Venezuela, and is about twice the size of California. It shares a 4047 km (2515-mile) border with Benin (773 km), Niger (1497 km), Chad (87 km), Cameroon (1690 km), and has a coastline of at least 853 km. Nigeria's main rivers are the Niger and the Benue which converge and empty into the Niger Delta, the world's largest river deltas. Nigeria is covered by three types of vegetation: forests (where there is significant tree cover), savannah (insignificant tree cover, with grasses and flowers located between trees), and montane land made of relatively moist cool upland slopes and dominated by large trees. (The latter is the least common, and is mainly found in the mountains near the Cameroonian border.)
DID YOU KNOW…?
In 2003, Nigerians were reported to be the happiest people in the World, after a scientific survey carried out in 65 nations between 1999 and 2001! The research was reported by one of the world's top science magazines, New Scientist, and was picked up by a number of news outlets. The report considered that the country's family life and culture were more important than its problems and material wealth in determining happiness. That’s right!
DID YOU KNOW…?
Jaja Wachuku, First Nigerian Speaker of the House (1959 – 1960), received Nigeria's Instrument of Independence - also known as Freedom Charter - on October 1, 1960, from Princess Alexandra of Kent, the Queen's representative at the Nigerian independence ceremonies.
DID YOU KNOW…?
It was Colonel Olusegun Obasanjo’s acceptance of the surrender from Biafran forces that marked the end of the 30 month long Nigerian Civil War on January 13, 1970. The next day Obasanjo announced the situation on the former rebel radio station Radio Biafra Enugu. And it was all over!
OUR LEADERS (from 1960)
Nnamdi Azikwe (1960 – 1966)
Nnamdi Azikiwe was born on November 16, 1904 in northern Nigeria to Igbo parents. He studied at the Methodist Boys' High School in Lagos , from where he went to the United States . There, he attended Howard University in Washington DC before enrolling and graduating from Lincoln University, Pennsylvania in 1930. He obtained a masters degree in 1933 from a prestigious Ivy League institution, the University of Pennsylvania.
He worked as an instructor at Lincoln before returning to his homeland, Africa where he took up the position of editor for the African Morning Post, a daily newspaper in Accra, Ghana. In that position he was a strong proponent of Africa ’s nationalist agenda. In his articles and public statements he condemned the prevalent social order as he criticized the existing colonial order: the restrictions on the Africans' right to express their opinions. After a clash with the law for one of his denunciatory articles, He returned to Lagos, Nigeria , in 1937 and founded the West African Pilot which he used as a vehicle to foster Nigerian nationalism. He also founded the Zik Group of Newspapers, publishing multiple newspapers in cities across the country. He was very passionate about securing Africa ’s Independence , sometimes, even at his own peril.
After a successful journalism career and enterprise, Azikiwe entered into politics and co-founded the National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons (NCNC) alongside Herbert Macaulay in 1944. He became the secretary-general of the National Council in 1946, and was the following year elected to the Legislative Council of Nigeria. In 1951, he became the leader of the Opposition to the government of Obafemi Awolowo in the Western Region's House of Assembly. In 1952, he moved to the Eastern Region, and was elected to the position of Chief Minister, and in 1954 became Premier of Nigeria's Eastern Region. On November 16, 1960 , he became the Governor General and on the same day became the first Nigerian named to the Queen's Privy Council. When Nigeria became a republic in 1963, he became the first President of Nigeria. As a politician, one of his popular maxims was "talk I listen, you listen I talk".
Azikiwe and his civilian colleagues were removed from power in the military coup of January 15, 1966 but his life was spared. During the Biafran (1967–1970) war of secession, he became a spokesman for the nascent Igbo republic and an adviser to its leader Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu. After the war, he served as Chancellor of Lagos State University from 1972 to 1976. He joined the Nigerian People's Party in 1978 and made unsuccessful bids for the presidency in 1979 and again in 1983. He left politics involuntarily after the military coup on December 31, 1983 .
On May 11, 1996 , he died at the University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital , in Enugu, Enugu State, after a protracted illness. Today, his image adorns the Nigerian Five hundred naira note. In his life time, Azikwe or ‘Zik’ as he is fondly called was a consistent achiever and had so many milestone achievement as a journalist and politician as well as in his post political life and even long after his death.
Major Gen. JTU Aguyi Ironsi (1966)
Thomas Umunnakwe Aguiyi-Ironsi was born to Mazi and Ezugo Aguiyi on March 3, 1924, in Umuahia-Ibeku, present day Abia State, Nigeria. Aguiyi-Ironsi excelled in military training at Eaton Hall, England and became a commissioned officer in June, 1949. He soon returned to Nigeria to serve as the Aide de camp to John Macpherson, Governor General of Nigeria. During the Congo Crisis of the 1960s, the United Nations Secretary-General, Dag Hammarskjöld, appealed to the Nigerian government to send troops to Congo. Lieutenant Colonel Ironsi led the 5th battalion to the Kivu and Leopoldville provinces of Congo. His unit proved integral to the peacekeeping effort, and he was soon appointed the Commander of the United Nations Operation in the Congo. Ironsi returned from Congo in 1964 during the post-independence "Nigerianization" of the country's institutions of government. It was decided that the British General Officer Commanding (GOC) of the Nigerian Army, Major General Welby-Everard , would step down to allow the government to appoint an indigenous GOC. Ironsi led the pack of candidates jostling for the coveted position. A consensus was reached by the ruling Northern People's Congress (NPC) and National Council of Nigerian Citizens (NCNC) coalition government, and Ironsi became General Officer and Commander of the Nigerian Army on February 9, 1965.
Then in 1966, after an abortive coup spearheaded by Major General Kaduna Nzeogwu on the existing new indigeneous civilian government of the Nation, just six years into self governance, Irosi hijacked the coup to become the first military ruler of the country after the interim civilian president Nwafor Orizu handed over political power to the military.
Ironsi inherited a Nigeria deeply fractured by its ethnic and religious cleavages. The fact that none of the high-profile victims of the 1966 coup were of Igbo extraction, and also that the main beneficiaries of the coup were Igbos, led the Hausas and Yorubas to believe that it was an Igbo conspiracy. Though Ironsi moved swiftly to dispel this notion by courting the aggrieved ethnic groups through political appointments and patronage, his failure to punish the coup plotters and the promulgation of the now infamous "Decree No. 1"—which abrogated the country's federal structure in exchange for a unitary one— crystallized this conspiracy theory. This decree was already being promoted by the westerners and south easterners and this actually fuelled northern fury.
Ironsi was shot at the Government House in Ibadan during the counter coup, few months later; only 194 days into his regime as Head of State. To his credit, he remains highest ranking Nigeria Army officer of all time being the only Field Marshal in Nigeria’s history.
Gen. Yakubu Gowon (1966 – 1975)
Yakubu Gowon is from Lur, a small village in the present Kanke Local Government Area of Plateau State. His parents, Nde Yohanna and Matwok Kurnyang, left for Wusasa, Zaria as Church Missionary Society (CMS) missionaries in the early days of Yakubu's life. He grew up in Zaria and had his early life and education there.
He is a Northerner who was neither of Hausa or Fulani ancestry nor of the Islamic faith (a Christian). This, made him a particularly safe choice to lead a nation whose population were seething with ethnic tension. In January 1966, he became Nigeria's youngest head of state at the age of 32. Gowon appeared to be a benefactor of a coup that he had little or nothing to do with to become Head of State.
In 1967, he led federal troops to stop a secession attempt by the Igbo people of Nigeria who had announced an independent nation of their own- the Republic of Biafra, led by Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu. This successfully kept the Nation together. However the result of his move to keep the Nation together led to the 1967-1970 Nigerian Civil War, the first and only civil war in Nigeria’s history. Nevertheless, his goodwill was again emphasized as he instituted the 3Rs (Reconciliation, Rehabilitation and Reconstruction) campaign that were to alleviate the far reaching effects of the gruesome Civil War.
Well, the day came on July 25, 1975, while Gowon was attending an OAU summit in Kampala, a group of officers led by Brigadier Murtala Mohammed, announced his overthrow in a bloodless coup! Gowon subsequently went into exile in the United Kingdom, where he acquired a Ph.D. in political science as a student at the University of Warwick. He lived in north London / Hertfordshire border, and very much became part the English community in his area , where he served a term as Churchwarden in the local church.
However trouble came knocking for Gowon after the abortive coup that led to the assasination of Muritala Mohammed in February 1976. He was indicted, maybe falsely and consequently declared wanted at this time and stripped of his rank in absentia. But the civilian president who came in in 1979 – Shehu Shagari granted him pardon so he became a free man again.
He returned to Nigeria in the 1980s, and in the 1990s he formed a non-denominational religious group, Nigeria Prays. Still based in the UK, General Gowon today serves an 'elder statesman' role in African politics, operating (for example) as an official observer at the Ghanaian presidential elections of 2008.
Gen Muritala Mohammed (1975 – 1976)
General Murtala Ramat Mohammed was born on November 8, 1938 and lived till February 13, 1976.
Mohammed opposed the regime of Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi which took power after a coup d'etat on January 15, 1966 carried out mainly by Christian Igbo from the south, in which several northern Nigerian leaders had been killed under gruesome circumstances. In the face of provocation from the southern dominated media which repeatedly showed humiliating posters and cartoons of the slain northern politicians, on the night of July 29, 1966 , northern soldiers at Abeokuta barracks mutinied, thus precipitating a counter-coup, which may very well have been in the planning stages. According to most southern sources Muhammad at first intended to use the counter-coup as a step towards the secession of northern Nigeria , but later dropped this demand when the economic difficulties of a potential Northern Nigerian State were pointed out to him by civil servants and British diplomats. The counter-coup led to the installation of Lieutenant-Colonel Yakubu Gowon as Supreme Commander of the Nigerian Armed Forces, despite the intransigence of Mohammed who wanted the role of Supreme Commander for himself. However, as Gowon was militarily his senior, and finding a lack of support from the British and American advisors, he caved in. Gowon rewarded him by confirming his ranking (he had been an acting Lt. Colonel till then) and his appointment (Inspector of Signals).
During the Nigerian Civil War, Mohammed was General Officer Commanding (GOC) of the Nigerian Army's 2nd Division. This division was responsible for beating back the Biafran Army from the midwest region, as well as crossing the River Niger and linking up with the 1st Division, which was marching down from Nsukka and Enugu . At the border town of Asaba , in the Igbo-speaking part of the midwest region, Mohammed was accused of leading his troops in one of the most gruesome episodes of the entire war. So he helped keep faith with the Gowon led government to keep the Nigerian nation together. However, with the declining popularity of the Gowon government, which had been characterized by excesses and corruption, Muritala Mohammed and some high ranking Army officers, including his soon to be second in command, Olusegun Obasanjo, carried out a bloodless coup on General Yakubu Gowon while the later was away at an Organization of African Unity (OAU) summit in Kampala , Uganda . One of his first acts was to scrap the 1973 census, which was weighted in favor of the north, and to revert to the 1963 count for official purposes. Murtala Mohammad removed top federal and state officials to break links with the Gowon regime and to restore public confidence in the federal government.
Tragically, Murtala Mohammed was killed on February 13, 1976 in an abortive coup attempt led by Lt.Col Buka Suka Dimka, when his car was ambushed while en route to his office at Dodan Barracks, Lagos. Several top officers, including his predecessor Yakubu Gowon, were accused of either planning or approving the coup attempt. He was succeeded by the Chief of Staff, Olusegun Obasanjo, who completed the plan of an orderly transfer to civilian rule by handing power to Shehu Shagari on October 1, 1979.
General (rtd)Olusegun Obasanjo (1979 – 1979), (1999-2007)
General (rtd.) Olusegun Obasanjo, was born March 5, 1937, he is a retired Nigerian Army general, a Christian of Yoruba descent, Obasanjo was a career soldier before serving twice as his nation's head of state, once as a military ruler, between February 13, 1976 to October 1, 1979 and again from May 29, 1999 to May 29, 2007, as elected President.
Obasanjo was born in Ogun State, and in 1958 he enlisted in the Nigerian Army. He fought for the unity of the country during the 1967-1970 Civil War and remarkably, he commanded the 3rd Marine Commando Division of the federal army that took Owerri, effectively bringing an end to the Nigerian civil war. In 1975, he was named the second in command to Muritala Mohammed, the then military Head of State. In 1976, he was marked for assassination along with Muritala Mohammed and other senior military personnel by coup plotters lead by army col. Buka Suka Dimka. But one colonel was mistaken for Obasanjo, and was subsequently killed together with Murtala on February 13, 1976 . After this, Obasanjo was made head of state in a meeting of the Supreme Military Council. Keeping the chain of command established by Murtala Muhammad in place. Obasanjo pledged to continue the programme for the restoration of civilian government in 1979, afore stated by the late Muritala Mohammed and to carry forward the reform programme to improve the quality of public service. Obasanjo served until October 1, 1979 , when he handed power to Shehu Shagari, a democratically elected civilian president; this made Obasanjo the first leader in Nigerian history to surrender power willingly. In late 1983, however, the military seized power again. Obasanjo, being in retirement, did not participate in this coup, and did not publicly support it.
During the reign of Sani Abacha (1993–1998), Obasanjo spoke out against the human rights abuses of the regime, and was imprisoned for his alleged participation in a bait coup. He was released only after Abacha's sudden death on 8 June 1998 . While in prison, Obasanjo became a born-again Christian!
In the 1999 elections, the first in sixteen years, he decided to run for the presidency as the candidate of the People's Democratic Party. Obasanjo won! Obasanjo was re-elected in 2003 and served his second term as a democratic ruler and third on a whole or better stated, 11 years in total. During his reign as civilian president he worked hard on laundering Nigeria ’s international image as well as fighting corruption. To his credit, also, he was reputed for his appointment of very qualified and intelligent people as members of his cabinet; attracting technocrats and Nigerian expatriates in various fields.
Economically, before Obasanjo's administration Nigeria 's GDP growth had been painfully slow since 1987, and only managed 3% between 1999/2000. However, under Obasanjo the growth rate doubled to 6%. Nigeria 's foreign reserves rose from $2 billion in 1999 to $43 billion on leaving office in 2007. He was able to secure debt pardons from the Paris and London club amounting to some $10 billion. Most of these loans were secured and spent by past corrupt officials. Let’s say; he did his bit.
Since leading a public campaign against corruption and implementing economic reforms in his country, he has been widely seen abroad as an African statesman championing debt relief and democratic institutions (three times rejecting government change by coups d'état in Africa as the chairperson of the African Union).
Alhaji Shehu Shagari (1979 – 1983)
Shehu Usman Shagari was born in Shagari village to the family of Magaji Aliyu and Mariamu in 1925. He was raised in a polygamous family, and was the sixth child born into the family.However, his father tragically died five years after his birth.
After finishing secondary school, he was called on to become the new pupil-science teacher of Sokoto Middle School , shortly after, he was appointed the science teacher for Zaria Middle school . In 1945, after the end World War 2, he moved back to become the science and also history and geography teacher of the Sokoto Middle School . There, he was re-united with his extended family who lived nearby. Six years after, he was posted to Argungu as the headmaster of the new primary school there.
In 1946, Shagari and Mallam Gambo Abuja started the Youth Social Circle, a political organization centered around Sokoto.The youth social circle of Sokoto agreed to the merger, and together with other groups formed the Northern People's congress. Later on, the organization became a political party and went on to win the national parliamentary election in 1959. Before 1959, Shagari was elected to represent the constituency of Sokoto Southwest. In 1958, he was appointed parliamentary secretary to the Prime Minister, Abubakar Tafawa Balewa. Shagari later went on to hold the positions of minister of Economic Development in 1960, minister of Internal Affairs in 1962 and minister of Works and Survey in 1965. However, the first republic was cut short by a military coup. Shagari returned to Sokoto to work on his farm and later to work as a councilor for the Sokoto Native Authority. In 1970, as part of a movement to broaden the government, Yakubu Gowon made Shagari a minister of Economic affairs and later of Finance. However, Gowon's government was later overthrown as in a bloodless coup by some military officers.
With Olusegun Obasanjo keeping his promise of a 1979 transition to civilian rule, Shehu Shagari won the 1979 presidential elections and became the Nation’s number one citizen. Sadly his regime was riddled with massive corruption scandals and after he ran an won reelection in 1983, his government was pushed out of power by yet another military coup. He was no hurt though and his deposition was actually looked upon by the Nigerian public as a welcome improvement.
Major Gen. Muhammadu Buhari (1983-1985)
Born December 17, 1942 , Major General Buhari hails from Kastina State and is of the Fulani ethnic origin. Major-General Buhari was selected to lead the country by middle and high-ranking military officers after a successful military coup d'etat that overthrew civilian President Shehu Shagari on December 31, 1983 and was appointed Head of State and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. Buhari justified the military's take over of power by exposing the deposed civilian government as hopelessly corrupt, as his administration subsequently initiated a public campaign against indiscipline known as "War Against Indiscipline (WAI)." The campaign is still lauded by many, today, to have instilled the most orderly conduct of public and private affairs in Nigeria since its independence in 1960. Buhari was himself overthrown in a bloodless coup led by General Ibrahim Babangida on August 27, 1985 and other members of the ruling Supreme Military Council (SMC).
Years later, Buhari served under the administration of General Sani Abacha (1993-1998) as the head of the Petroleum Trust Fund, a body created by Government, and funded from deductions in the Revenue fund, to pursue developmental projects around the country. His transparent and efficient handling of this agency endeared him to Nigerians yet again. In 2003, Buhari contested the Presidential election as the candidate of the All Nigeria People's Party (ANPP).
He was defeated by the People's Democratic Party nominee, President Olusẹgun Ọbasanjọ. In 18 December 2006, Gen. Buhari was nominated as the consensus candidate of the All Nigeria People's Party, in preparation for the 2007 general elections which he lost again to PDP’s Umar Musa Yar’ Adua. In all these, however, to his credit, Buhari remains one of the few former leaders of Nigeria who has never been suspected of corruption.
Gen. Ibrahim B. Babangida (1985 – 1993)
General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida, popularly known as IBB was born August 17, 1941 and hails from Minna, Niger State, Nigeria. IBB joined the Nigerian Army on December 10, 1962 and was vastly schooled in the art of military warfare; he studied at the India Military School in 1964, the Royal Armoured Centre from January 1966 until April 1966, at the Advanced Armoured Officers' course at Armored school from August 1972 to June 1973, at the Senior officers' course, Command and Staff College, Jaji from January 1977 until July 1977, and the Senior International Defence Management Course, Naval Post graduate school, U.S in 1980. Little wonder he is the ‘genuis’!
He was the one who took over power from General Muhammadu Buhari on 27 August 1985 in a bloodless military coup to hold the reins of power from then till 1993 when he ‘stepped aside’, the only military ruler in the country’s history to do so.
In 1989 Babangida legalized the formation of political parties, and after a census was carried out in November 1991, the National Electoral Commission (NEC) announced on January 24, 1992 that both legislative elections to a bicameral National Assembly and a presidential election would be held that year. For this purpose, he formed two political parties by himself, namely the SDP (Social Democractic Party) and NRC (National Republican Convention) after he banned all existing political parties.
However, in an effort to foil an intended coup on the new civilian government and other undisclosed reasons, Babangida decided to annul the elections that were held on June 12th 1993.
Well, the day came on August 26 1993, amidst strikes and protests as a result of the annuled elections, that had brought all economic activities in the country to a halt, Babangida declared that he was stepping aside from the presidency, and handing over the reins of government to prominent civilian, Ernest Shonekan.
Years later, on 8th November, 2006, General Babangida picked a nomination form from the Peoples Democratic Party Headquarters in Abuja, Nigeria to run for presidency in the 2007 General Elections. However, in early December, just before the PDP presidential primary, it was reported that IBB had withdrawn his candidacy for President.And that was the true story as the ‘genuis’ ‘stepped aside’ again, this time from becoming the number one citizen of the country a second time in one lifetime.
Earnest Shonekan (1993)
Ernest Oladeinde Shonekan, born 9 May 1936 in Lagos, south-west Nigeria is a British trained Nigerian lawyer, industrialist and politician. On January 2, 1993 , Shonekan assumed office as the head of government affairs under the leadership of military president, Babangida. He was then appointed as interim president of Nigeria by General Ibrahim Babangida on 26 August 1993. Shonekan's transitional administration only lasted three months.
Prior to his political career, Shonekan was the Chief executive of United African Company of Nigeria PLC (UAC), a large Nigerian conglomerate.
Shonekan was born and raised in Lagos . The son of an Abeokuta born civil servant, he was one of six children born into the family. Shonekan was educated at C.M.S grammar school. He also attended and received a law degree from the University of London and was later called to the bar. He soon joined U.A.C in 1964 and was sent to the Harvard Business School for further managerial training. Few years after joining the company, he was promoted to the position of assistant legal adviser. He became a deputy adviser two years later, and soon joined the board. In 1980, he was made chairman and Chief Executive of U.A.C.
During his few months in power, he had tried to create a new timetable for Nigeria ’s return to democracy. One of his major decisions was to release political detainees and to set a timetable for troop withdrawal from ECOMOG's peacekeeping mission in Liberia. His government also initiated an audit of the accounts of NNPC, an organization that was mired in operational inefficiencies, and presented a bill for banning three major draconian decrees. However, his loose control of the military proved to be his achilles' heel as General Sanni Abacha, the then Defense Secretary forcefully took control of power from him in November 1993.
Gen. Sanni Abacha (1993 – 1998)
General Sani Abacha was born in Kano on 20th September 1943 and lived till 8th June 1998. As a military man, he was triumphant in the two bloodless military coups d'état that brought and removed General Muhammadu Buhari from power in 1983. When General Ibrahim Babangida was named President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria in 1985, Abacha was named Chief of Army Staff. He was later appointed Minister of Defence in 1990. Abacha finally took over power from the caretaker government of Chief Ernest Shonekan, which was put in place by General Ibrahim Babangida. His regime suffered stiff opposition internally and externally. However, he supported the Economic Community of West African States and sent Nigerian troops to Liberia and Sierra Leone to restore democracy to those countries.
General Abacha died, allegedly, of a heart attack, in June 1998 while at the presidential villa in Abuja at age 54. He was buried on the same day, according to Muslim religion, without an autopsy, fueling speculation that he may have been poisoned by political rivals.
Gen. Abdusalami Abubakar (1998-1999)
General Abdusalami Abubakar is a career soldier little known outside military circles before he came to power in June 1998.
He was effectively the number three in the Abacha regime, after Oladipo Diya, who was put out of the running when he was arrested - and subsequently sentenced to death - for treason.
General Abubakar's roots lie in the same Minna region of northern Nigeria as the former military ruler Ibrahim Babangida, whose annulment of 1993 elections plunged Nigeria into political turmoil and paved the way for Abacha's takeover also Abubakar served as intelligence chief under Babangida. He always showed himself to be in favour of handing over power to a civilian administration.
On assuming office he abolished the widely discredited political parties set up by the late General Sanni Abacha, his predecessor. This move actually struck a chord among many Nigerians, for whom its tone of reconciliation implied a genuine intention to correct the mistakes of the past.
On assuming power, General Abubakar promised that his tenure in office will be brief, and that the soldiers will soon return to the barracks.
Political parties were consequently allowed to form, and the transition process was under way. And in 1999, he handed over to a democratically elected President; Olusegun Obasanjo.
Umar Musa Yar’ Adua (2007 till date)
Umaru Musa Yar’Adua was born 16 August 1951 and is the 2nd President of Nigeria's Fourth Republic. Yar'Adua was born into an aristocratic Fulani family in Katsina. He started his education at Rafukka Primary School in 1958, and moved to Dutsinma Boarding Primary School in 1962. He attended Government College, Keffi, from 1965 until 1969, and received a Higher School Certificate from Barewa College in 1971. He attended Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria from 1972 to 1975, attaining a BSc in Education and Chemistry, and then returned in 1978 to achieve an M.Sc Degree in Analytical Chemistry.
Yar'Adua's first employment was at Holy Child College in Lagos (1975-1976). He later served as a lecturer at the Katsina College of Arts, Science and Technology in Zaria between 1976 and 1979. In 1979 he began working as a lecturer at College of Art Science , remaining in this position until 1983, when he began working in the corporate sector.
He worked at Sambo Farms Ltd in Funtua, Katsina State as its pioneer General Manager between 1983 and 1989. He served as a Board Member, Katsina State Farmers' Supply Company between 1984 and 1985. He became a member of the Governing Council of Katsina College of Arts, Science and Technology Zaria and Katsina Polytechnic between 1978 and 1983. And was Board Chairman of Katsina State Investment and Property Development Company (KIPDECO) between 1994 and 1996.
Yar'Adua served as a director of many companies, including Habib Nigeria Bank Ltd. 1995-1999; Lodigiani Nigeria Ltd. 1987-1999, Hamada Holdings, 1983-1999; and Madara Ltd. Vom, Jos, 1987-1999. He was Chairman, Nation House Press Ltd, Kaduna between 1995-1999.
In 1999, he ran for the post of executive governor of Kastina State and won but this would not be his first time of aspiring for this position as he lost his 1991 race for the same position to Saidu Barda during the Babangida Regime. And in 2003, he was elected for his second term.
Later, in the April 2007 presidential elections, Yar’ Adua, with a spotless record as a state governor ran and won the election to become the second President in Nigeria ’s fourth republic.
Yar'Adua is married to Turai Umaru Yar'Adua, they have been together since 1975 and have seven children (5 daughters and 2 sons). Yar'Adua was also married to Hauwa Umar Radda as a second wife from 1992 to 1997. They have two children. He appears to be growing in influence as the years come. |
