Mayaki was born in Filingué in 1919. His family was of a royal Sudié line, a Hausa speaking subgroup which governed the town under French colonial rule. His grandfather was the first French appointed Chef du Canton of the area, and his father was Serkin of Filingué until 1935. Mayaki attended the French teachers college at Kati, Mali, became a civil engineer, and became active in politics in 1946 as a leader of the Nigerien Action Bloc (BNA), which later became the Union of Nigerien Independents and Sympathisers (UNIS), one of two pre-independence parties contesting the 1952 territorial elections. Mayaki was elected to the Nigerien Territorial Assembly in March 1952 from Maradi and was re-elected in 1956. From 1952 he also served on the Grand Council of French West Africa, and from 1953 as Niger colony's representative to the French Union and in 1958, after the UNIS split, was elected to the first Territorial National Assembly from the PPN-RDA-led Union for the Franco-African Community (UCFA). The UCFA was a front aligned with the PPN which proposed continued membership in the French Community, and opposed immediate independence proposed by the PPN's rival SAWABA party. The 1958 election deposed SAWABA (which some other UNIS members had joined) from the Assembly, and Mayaki became a prominent member of Hamani Diori's first semi-independent Nigerien government.
