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Ali Saibou

President of Niger (1940-2011)

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJul 25, 2026
Entity authorityQ448655
Source-derived summary

Ali Saibou (17 June 1940 – 31 October 2011) was the third President of Niger from 1987 to 1993 succeeding the deceased military ruler Seyni Kountché.

A member of the Djerma people, he was born in Dingajibanda, a village in the Ouallam arrondissement. Although from Kountché's home village, Saibou is not a cousin. He became interested in a military career early on, and attended the Saint-Louis preparatory school in Senegal from 1954, then joined the First Senegalese Tirailleurs Regiment. He saw action in Cameroon in 1960, and was wounded there while with the 5th Overseas Interarms Regiment (RIOM) of France.

Upon Niger's independence in 1960, Saibou was transferred to the new Niger Army as a sergeant in August 1961. He attended officers' school, and in 1969 was put in command of a unit at N'Guigmi. After moving to a new unit in Agadez in 1973, he attained the rank of captain. Saibou threw in his lot with Kountché in the coup of April 1974, and brought his troops from Agadez to Niamey. As a reward he was promoted to major, appointed to the cabinet as minister of rural economy and the environment, and on 20 November 1974, made chief of staff.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Ali Saibou” is president of Niger (1940-2011). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Saibou, President and Niger, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1940, 2011, 1987, 1993—that can be checked directly. The authority record carries competing date values—1940-06-17, 1940—which should remain separate until their references and qualifiers are resolved. For this dossier, Saibou, President and Niger is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “president of Niger (1940-2011)” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q448655. VIAF identifies the subject as 1614171. The Library of Congress control number is n89614373. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1940, 2011, 1987 and 1993.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
Verify next

The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Ali Saibou”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Ali Saibou primary sources, Ali Saibou archive and Saibou research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Ali Saibou”?
  2. Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
  3. Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Ali Saibou” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.