1. Shehu Usman Aliyu Shagari was a Nigerian politician who was the first democratically elected president of Nigeria, after the transfer of power by military head of state General Olusegun Obasanjo in 1979, which gave rise to the Second Nigerian Republic.
Shehu Shagari's tenure ended with a military coup in 1983.
Shehu Usman Shagari was born on 25 February 1925 in Shagari to a Sunni Muslim Fulani family.
The town of Shehu Shagari was founded by his great-grandfather, Ahmadu Rufa'i.
Shehu Shagari was raised in a polygamous family, and was the sixth child born into the family.
Shehu Shagari started his education in a Quranic school and then went to live with relatives at a nearby town, where from 1931 to 1935 he attended Yabo elementary school.
Between 1944 and 1952, Shehu Shagari matriculated at the Teachers Training College, in Zaria, Kaduna, Nigeria.
From 1953 to 1958, Shehu Shagari got a job as a visiting teacher at Sokoto Province.
Shehu Shagari was a member of the Federal Scholarship Board from 1954 to 1958.
Shehu Usman Shagari entered politics in 1951 when he became the secretary of the Northern People's Congress in Sokoto, Nigeria, a position he held until 1956.
In 1948, when Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe of the NCNC was touring Nigeria to raise funds to send a delegation to London to ask the Colonial Office to abrogate Richard's constitution as undemocratic, Shehu Shagari who was a keen reader of the West-African Pilot paper was the only man of Sokoto origin to attend this meeting.
The West African Pilot was banned in the northern region schools, and Shehu Shagari wrote for it an article for its revival in 1948.
In 1954, Shehu Shagari was elected into his first public office as a member of the federal House of Representative for Sokoto west.
In 1958, Shehu Shagari was appointed parliamentary secretary to the Nigerian prime minister, Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, and that year he served as the federal minister for commerce and industries.
From 1962 to 1965, Shehu Shagari was made the federal minister for internal affairs.
From 1965 up until the first military coup in January 1966, Shehu Shagari was the federal minister for works and had executed many important projects, including Eko Bridge Lagos, which was the first major contract of the German construction firm Julius Berger in Nigeria, and the completion of the Niger Bridge which was commissioned in 1966 by Prime Minister Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa.
From 1968 to 1969, Shehu Shagari was given a state position in the North-Western State as Commissioner for Establishments.
Shehu Shagari became the chairman of the next CPA Conference held in Lagos between October and November 1962.
In 1963, Shehu Shagari was Nigeria's delegate to CPA meeting in Kuala Lumpur.
Shehu Shagari expressed concerns about Rhodesia now Zimbabwe, where he criticizes the Britain colonial policies and the handling of Rhodesia's situation.
Shehu Shagari had a great impact on politics during his tenure.
Shehu Shagari made headlines on New Zealand's Christchurch Star of 4 December 1965, and The Morning Post of Wellington.
Shehu Shagari led a delegation to the first session of the Economic Social Commission of the Organisation of African Unity.
Shehu Shagari represented the prime minister on different occasions, including when President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt invited Nigerian prime minister Abubakar to inspect Egypt's security arrangements.
Shehu Shagari represented Prime Minister Tafawa Balewa at Winston Churchill's funeral.
Shehu Shagari served as the executive secretary of the Sokoto Province Education Development Fund in 1967, where he built many provincial schools.
Shehu Shagari was later appointed as Commissioner of Establishment and Training and served briefly as Commissioner for Education in the defunct North Western States before he was invited to serve under the Federal Military Government of Gen.
Shehu Shagari began reconstruction and rehabilitation of schools, hospitals, and other infrastructure in the South East.
Shehu Shagari undertook the mission of persuading South Easterners to rejoin the civil service while negotiating the release of Biafran political prisoners after a letter written to him by Pius Okigbo was smuggled for him from Enugu Prisons.
In 1976, Shehu Shagari initiated the Nigeria Trust Fund in African Development Bank with the sum of $100 million in order to assist poor African countries to finance some of their developmental projects.
Shehu Shagari was elected as the counsellor of Yabo Local Government in 1976.
In 1978, Shehu Shagari was a founding member of the National Party of Nigeria.
In 1979 Shehu Shagari was chosen by the party as the presidential candidate for general election that year, which he won the 1979 election with the help of his campaign manager, Umaru Dikko.
Shehu Shagari's government embarked on a "Green Revolution", distributing seed and fertilizer to farmers to increase nationwide productivity in farming, In Agriculture.
Shehu Shagari commissioned the Bakalori Dam in Sokoto State, South Chad Irrigation Scheme, Borno State, Kafin Zaki Dam Bauchi State, Ogun River Dam, Ogun State, Dadin Kowa Dam Bauchi State, Goronyo Dam Sokoto State, and Zobe Dam, Kastina State.
In 1980, with the oil revenue, Shehu Shagari finished building the Kaduna refinery, which started operating that year.
Also with the oil revenue, Shehu Shagari started the construction of Ajaokuta Steel Mill which was near completion by 1983.
In 1983, Shehu Shagari created the Aluminium Smelter Company of Nigeria at Ikot Abasi.
However, Shehu Shagari reduced the share of oil royalties and rents to state of origin from 30 to 2 percent.
In housing, Shehu Shagari had the target of building 200,000 housing units, but by June 1983, only thirty thousand units had been completed.
Shehu Shagari built and improved some seaports including Sapele Ports Complex and started Federal Ocean Terminal in Port Harcourt.
Shehu Shagari "refused to embrace" structural adjustment from the IMF and World Bank as the crisis progressed, and initiated an Economic Stabilization Program to help protect the country against a hard landing from prior highs of the 1970s and to steer the economy towards positive growth.
However, before removal from office, in his second term, Shehu Shagari made attempts to curb corruption through the new Ministry of National Guidance under Yusuf Maitama Sule, which was solely created for that purpose.
Shehu Shagari's government has recorded a number of successes in education.
Shehu Shagari's administration upgraded seven other existing colleges of education to degree-awarding institutions in Abraka, Ondo, Kano, Ado Ekiti, Bidda, Port Harcourt, and Zaria and established eight other federal polytechnics in Ado Ekiti, Bidda, Bauchi, Idah, Uwana, Yola and Ilaro.
Shehu Shagari appointed Ebun Oyagbola as Minister of National Planning and later Ambassador to the United Mexican States of Panama, Costa Rica and Guatemalan and Mrs Janet Akinrinade as State Minister of Internal Affairs and two other female ministers Mrs Asinobi and Mrs Ivasi.
The one-year term Shehu Shagari administration saw a rapid growth of the capacity of the Nigerian Armed Forces.
The military procurement under Shehu Shagari remains the highest in Nigeria's history.
In 1983, Shehu Shagari issued an executive order mandating immigrants without proper immigration documents to leave the country or they would be arrested according to the law.
Shehu Shagari laid the first infrastructure of the new city, the first of which is the road from Suleja to the site of the capital.
When Shehu Shagari was removed, he was away in the city for a vacation.
Shehu Shagari's presidency maintained Nigeria's foreign policy since 1960, which was centred on Africa.
Shehu Shagari himself was not new to foreign relations as he has led several Nigerian delegations to foreign missions since independence.
Shehu Shagari's presidency advocated and acted rigorously against apartheid in South African and white minority rule in Zambia and Zimbabwe.
Shehu Shagari has severally made his position known everywhere he was including during his state visits to the United Kingdom and the United States where President Jimmy Carter had congratulated him on the independence of Zimbabwe.
In 1980, during Zimbabwe's independence celebration, President Shehu Shagari pledged $15 million at the celebration to train Zimbabweans in Zimbabwe and expatriates in Nigeria.
Shehu Shagari made attempts to create ties between Nigeria and African Americans during his visits to the United States.
President Shehu Shagari insisted on maintaining Nigeria's non-alignment policy and took part in the Russian Olympics despite lobby by the Carter Administration which sent the famous boxer Mohammed Ali to Nigeria.
Shehu Shagari refused to see Mohammed Ali during his lobby tour.
Shehu Shagari's government was a great supporter of ECOWAS and allotted a plot for the building of its headquarters in Abuja.
Shehu Shagari ran for a second four-year term in 1983 and won the general election before later being overthrown and arrested by General Muhammadu Buhari in a military coup on 31 December 1983.
On 28 December 2018 at about 6:30pm, Shehu Shagari died from a brief illness at the National Hospital, Abuja, where he was admitted to and undergoing treatment before his death.
Shehu Shagari married three wives: Amina, Aisha, and Hadiza Shagari.
Shehu Shagari had several children, including Muhammad Bala Shagari and Aminu Shehu Shagari.