The End of the Second Republic

On 31 December 1983 a group of senior officers, led by Brigadier Sani Abacha as the man who announced the coup and Major-General Muhammadu Buhari as the new Head of State, overthrew the re-elected National Party of Nigeria government of President Shehu Shagari. The coup ended Nigeria's Second Republic after just over four years. The grounds cited included the manifest rigging of the 1983 general elections (in which Shagari was returned with implausible margins), runaway corruption associated with the oil-bust years, and the collapse of food prices and the manufacturing sector under the strain of the 1981–83 oil-price decline. The Buhari/Idiagbon administration introduced the War Against Indiscipline, jailed Second-Republic politicians under Decrees 2 and 4, and was itself overthrown by Babangida in August 1985 — beginning a continuous run of military rule that would last until 1999.