Mahgoub graduated from engineering school in 1929 and in 1938, he obtained a Bachelor of Laws degree from the Gordon Memorial College.

The 1965 Mahgoub's government had two goals: progress toward solving the southern problem and the removal of communists from positions of power.

The army launched a major offensive to crush the rebellion and in the process augmented its reputation for brutality among the southerners.

Sudanese army troops also burned churches and huts, closed schools, destroyed crops and looted cattle.

His campaigns, which included massacres against southern civilians and looting that destroyed entire towns, have been described by some scholars as genocidal and have been compared to the methods of Alphonse de Malzac, a 19th-century European White Nile slave-raider.