Muhammadu Maccido, the most senior dignitary among the 96 victims of a plane accident in Abuja, in 1998 became Nigeria's first sultan to meet a Roman Catholic pope as part of his work to forge better relations between Muslims and Christians.
The Sultan of Sokoto, as spiritual leader of more than 50 million Muslims in Nigeria, met Pope John Paul II in Abuja, the federal capital, when the pontiff of that time paid an official visit to the country.
The two religious leaders discussed how to achieve a rapprochement between Muslims and Christians in the west African country of 130 million people, where there are more than 50 million Muslims.
Maccido, who was 80 when he died in Sunday's crash, was generally known to be a man of peace and promoter of inter-religious harmony. He had several times in the past decade come out publicly to condemn religious or ethnic riots, many of which have taken hundreds of lives.
"The sultan was a man of peace who lived and died for peace. I am
personally touched by this tragedy and there is hardly a family in Nigeria that is not affected by this tragic accident by association or other forms of interaction," President Olusegun Obasanjo said Monday during a visit to the Sultan's palace in Sokoto, his entourage told AFP.
"The late Sultan worked and died for peace. He laboured for the unity, understanding and co-operation between the two major religions in the country," he was also quoted as saying in a report on the visit by official News Agency of Nigeria (NAN).
Since he was a respected religious leader, the government often turned to the Sultan of Sokoto for help in promoting its programmes, some of which may appear difficult to sell in the Muslim-dominated northern region.
"We called on him when we were looking for how to deal with the HIV scourge and his immense contributions cannot be quantified," Obasanjo said.
In the past two years, Maccido personally had added his voice in support of government campaign against polio and HIV-AIDS. He died a day after attending a government-sponsored Presidential Forum on Education in the capital.
On the death of his father Sultan Abubakar III in 1988, Maccido was selected to succeed his father but that move was abruptly overturned by then military dictator Ibrahim Babangida and Maccido's cousin, Ibrahim Dasuki, who was very close to the military government.
Dasuki was then appointed as the sultan.
The public jubilation that had followed the initial selection of Maccido turned into bloody riots when tanks rolled into the streets of Sokoto to crush protests by angry mobs, who had taken to the streets denouncing the appointment of Dasuki. Many people were killed.
However, on April 21, 1996, the then military dictator Sani Abacha dethroned Dasuki as the sultan following a personality clash. Maccido was crowned the Sultan of Sokoto and became President of the Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs (NCIA), Nigeria's highest Islamic instance.
He thus became the 19th Sultan of Sokoto since the Sokoto Jihad of 1804.