Shehu Shagari

شيخو شاجاري

–

Nigerian politician (1925–2018) from the town of Shagari in Sokoto State who worked as a teacher, sat in the House of Representatives from 1954 and held a succession of federal cabinet posts, before becoming Nigeria's first democratically elected president in the Second Republic (1979–1983). Re-elected in 1983, he was overthrown by a coup at the end of that year. He died in Abuja on 28 December 2018, aged 93.

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At a glance

Roles
Politician · teacher
Region
West Africa & Sahel
Identifiers
Wikidata
Review

Life in time

1900192519501975200020252050
The Colonial Era · The Contemporary Era · The Modern Era Contemporaries: Abderrahmane Youssoufi · Mufti Abdul Razzaq · Ali Hassan Mwinyi · Ali Yafie · Muhammad Saleemullah Khan

Place in the story

    Unknown (unknown)

    Roles are dated and sourced; the museum describes the act and attributes the judgement.

    President of the Second Republic

    When the military head of state Olusegun Obasanjo handed power to a civilian government in 1979, Shagari became Nigeria's first democratically elected president. He was re-elected in 1983, but his second term was cut short within months by the coup of 31 December 1983 1 2. He died in Abuja on 28 December 2018, aged 93 1 3.

    Affiliation, as the sources attest it

    The word "Sunni" occurs in the English article's text exactly once, in the family framing that Shagari was "born ... to a Sunni Muslim Fulani family" — attached to his family, not to him 1. The English and Arabic articles file him in "Nigerian Sunni Muslims" categories, and Wikidata carries a single structured value of Sunni Islam 2 3. Family framing, category filings and one structured value are one framing family, not two independent attestations, so the record keeps his affiliation unknown, flagged for the founder's word, with the Sunni reading preserved in the record's note.

    Sources

    • The defined source entities cited above, recorded in data/source/.
    • Revisions of this article must be dated, and must name the source that changed each fact.

    Connections

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    Predecessor of
    Muhammadu Buhari

    People and things also explored

    Ibrahim Babangida· Muhammadu Buhari

    Sources

    1. Shehu Shagari — English Wikipedia
    2. Shehu Shagari — Arabic Wikipedia
    3. Shehu Shagari — Wikidata Q380668
    Cite this page

    islam.museum contributors. “Shehu Shagari”. islam.museum, https://islam.museum/en/person/shehu-shagari/. CC BY-SA 4.0. Last updated 2026-10-26.

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    Related

    Ibrahim Babangida

    Nigerian general and politician (born 1941) from Minna who ruled Nigeria as military president from the coup of 27 August 1985 that overthrew Buhari until he stepped aside in August 1993. Under him Nigeria joined the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation in 1986, and he annulled the 12 June 1993 election apparently won by Moshood Abiola, precipitating the Third Republic crisis. As a boy he received early Islamic education before primary school.