Shehu Shagari

Remember that story of Obasanjo and Shagary? When Obasanjo wanted to appoint the chief of...

a new chief justice of Nigeria and Shagari had been elected he went to Shagari to say you prefer I choose this one or that one I became a UPM made an issue out of it but it was explained that once you are in transition you are in transition

the

president who is being footed out or whose tenure has ended his successor has been elected knows that he's coming the problem so hitherto is that or to date is that people spend all those three months on victory lap Congratulations, yeah.

But so far, he's been the worst president that we've ever had, since I've never been this expensive.

Wait, because I know when I was, we were in Nigeria, and Shagari was the president, and he was overthrown.

That's a

long time

ago.

Yeah, I was, look, and Shagari, and we were there when he got overthrown.

Things were

good at that time.

Now.

You know, so you're not gonna blame, you're not gonna look back at 1983 to s- to say that, "Yes, you're right." After, after Shagari, of course, he came in and he didn't even solve all the mess Shagari left when he wa- when Shaga- when he, when the, when it, when the, in the coup that happened, after the coup that happened.

So I don't think you can blame the Buhari supporter, though.

I don't, I think that would be too much.

I, I need some clarity on whether the houses will be, um, will be horizontal, vertical, whether they'll be bungalows.

You know, Shagari did something that is quite remarkable.

Mm-hmm.

He built small, small units-

I have never seen a time from 1977 or '78 that Nigerians didn't lament.

I was there under Shagari.

I was there under Sani, under Buhari.

I was there under, uh, Obasanjo also.

The 1979 elections went relatively smoothly.

A moderate consensus building politician named Alhaji Shehu Shagari won the presidency.

But here is the massive external factor that completely derailed this democratic experiment.

By 1979, Nigeria wasn't just an emerging democracy.

Acknowledgement that, uh, the military has no business in, uh, governance.

And so after many years of a military dictatorship, uh, the military came to the inevitable conclusion that eventually they had to hand over, and that was what they did, um, you know, uh, handing over to Shehu Shagari in the Second Republic.

Obviously, there was a lot of hope.

And the hope really in 19- perhaps the hope in 1979 was higher than all the other, other hopes that, you know, uh, that, uh, herald or that, um, follow every change of government, and that is the fact that a new government has come in, has, has, has come into power.

From then on, the military became both ruler and referee, shaping politics at will, but leaving deeper cracks behind.

In 1979, civilian rule returned with Shehu Shagari.

But by 1983, another coup brought Major General Muhammadu Buhari.

Two years later, Ibrahim Babangida seized power.