Farmers Protest in Nigeria 1979-1980

The Bakalori Project, an irrigation scheme in Sokoto, for example, became the focus of serious unrest in the late 1970s when thousands of farmers protested the loss of their land, and police retaliated by burning villages and killing or wounding hundreds of people.

Shagari was accused of closing his eyes to the elimination of over three hundred farmers over Bakalori dam in the peak of his five-year administration of Nigeria.