President Umaru Yar’Adua’s father, Musa Yar’Adua, was the first minister of Lagos federal territory during Nigeria’s First Republic, between October 1960 and January 1966. Musa in turn was the son of Malam Umaru, an Islamic scholar and aristocrat, first appointed by the British as matawali (treasurer) of Katsina Emirate, one of the leading emirates that had emerged after the conquest of Hausaland by the early 19th-century Islamic scholar and reformer, Sheikh Usman Danfodio.


Musa had three wives and many children. One of the wives, Hajiya Dada, had 12 children, including Shehu and Umaru Yar’Adua. Shehu joined the army after his secondary-school education and years later rose to become the second-in-command in the military regime that emerged following the February 1976 attempted coup in which General Murtala Mohammed was killed. The regime was led by a triumvirate of Generals Olusegun Obasanjo, Theophilus Danjuma and Shehu Yar’Adua. After their retirement in 1979, all three retained their interest in the affairs of state.


Shehu started a political movement, which eventually became the basis of the Social Democratic Party, one of two parties allowed to register by General Ibrahim Babangida’s regime (1985-1993), but Babangida barred him from contesting the leadership. Thereafter, Shehu became the spearhead of the opposition to General Sani Abacha’s regime of 1993-1998. Abacha detained Shehu on a trumped-up charge of an attempted coup. He and Obasanjo were tried and sentenced to death. Pressure from home and abroad forced Abacha to commute the sentences to life. Obasanjo survived but Shehu was killed in prison in December 1997.

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