Background
He was born in Wad Nubawi Omdurman in central Sudan, and was the son of a postman and the great grandson of a local tribal monarch from the Wad Nimeiry region in Dongola, in the Northern State.
He was born in Wad Nubawi Omdurman in central Sudan, and was the son of a postman and the great grandson of a local tribal monarch from the Wad Nimeiry region in Dongola, in the Northern State.
He studied at the prestigious Hantoub School, a British style secondary boarding school for the elite. In an incident in 1948, when protesting against British rule in Sudan by leading students to strike in his school, he was temporarily expelled.
In 1952 Nimeiry graduated from the Sudan Military College, where he was greatly influenced by the ideas of Gamal Abdel Nasser's Free Officers Movement, which gained power in Egypt that same year. Later he joined the Khartoum garrison.
Later in 1971 he was elected President winning a referendum with 98.6 per cent of the votes. He then dissolved the RCC and founded the Sudanese Socialist Union which he declared to be the only legal political organization. In 1972 he signed the Addis Ababa Agreement which ended the First Sudanese Civil War and ushered in an 11-year period of peace and stability to the region. In 1973 he drafted a new constitution which declared Sudan to be a democratic, socialist state and gave considerable power to the office of President.
In 1981 Nimeiry, pressured by his Islamic opponents, and still President of Sudan, began a dramatic shift toward Islamist political governance.The administrative boundaries of the south were also reformed.