Olusegun Mathew Okikiola Aremu Obasanjo,
GCFR[3] (
;
Yoruba:
Olúṣẹ́gun Ọbásanjọ́ [olúʃɛ̙́ɡũ ɒ̙básandʒɒ̙́];
[4] born circa 5 March 1937) is a former
Nigerian Army general who was
President of
Nigeria from 1999 to 2007. A Nigerian of
Yoruba
descent, Obasanjo was a career soldier before serving twice as his
nation's head of state, as a military ruler from 13 February 1976 to 1
October 1979 and as a democratically elected president from 29 May 1999
to 29 May 2007. From July 2004 to January 2006, Obasanjo also served as
Chairperson of the African Union.
His current home is
Abeokuta, the capital city of
Ogun State, where he is a nobleman as the holder of the
chieftaincy titles of the
Balogun of the Owu Lineage and the
Ekerin Balogun of the
Egba clan of
Yorubaland.
Family and early life
Ọbasanjọ was born in
Ogun State;
[5] and grew up in Owu (
Abeokuta). His first name, Olusegun, means "
The Lord is victorious".
[6]
The
Oloye
Obasanjo's first wife, Mrs. Oluremi (Remi) Obasanjo, is the mother of
his oldest children, the most well-known being Dr. Iyabo Obasanjo-Bello,
a former Senator of Ogun State.
In 1987, his second wife/ex-wife Lynda was ordered out of her car by
armed men, and was fatally shot for failing to move quickly.
[7]
On 23 October 2005 the President lost his wife,
Stella Obasanjo,
First Lady of Nigeria the day after she had an
abdominoplasty
in Spain. In 2009 the doctor only known as 'AM' was sentenced to one
year in jail for negligence in Spain and ordered to pay restitution to
her son of about $176,000.
[8] Obasanjo has many children, who live throughout Nigeria, the United Kingdom and the United States.
[9]
His son, Dare Obasanjo, is a Principal Program Manager for Microsoft.
[10]
Career
At the age of 21, he enlisted in the
Nigerian Army in 1958. He attended the 6-month Short Service Commission training at
Mons Officer Cadet School in
Aldershot in
England, and was thereafter commissioned as an officer in the
Nigerian Army.
[11] He was also trained in India at the
Defence Services Staff College, Wellington and at the Indian Army School of Engineering.
[12][13] He served at 1 Area Command in
Kaduna.
Promoted to Chief Army Engineer, he was made commander of 2 Area
Command from July 1967, which was redesignated 2 Division Rear, and then
the Ibadan Garrison Organisation.
[14] He was also trained in DSSC, Wellington. During the
Nigerian Civil War, he commanded the Army's
3 Marine Commando Division that
took Owerri, effectively bringing an end to the civil war.
Although Brig. Ọbasanjọ did not participate in the
military coup of 29 July 1975, led by
Murtala Mohammed,
he supported it and was named Murtala's deputy in the new government.
As chief of staff of Supreme Headquarters, Obasanjo sought advice from
Rogerlay of Akobi and gained support of the military. On 13 February
1976, coup plotters, led by Army Col. Dimka, marked him, Murtala and
other senior military personnel for assassination. Murtala was killed
during the attempted coup, but Obasanjo escaped death. The low profile
security policy adopted by Murtala had allowed the plotters easy access
to their targets. The coup was foiled because the plotters missed
Obasanjo and General
Theophilus Danjuma, chief of army staff and
de facto
number three man in the country. The plotters failed to monopolize
communications, although they were able to take over the radio station
to announce the coup attempt.
Obasanjo and Danjuma established a chain of command and re-established security in
Lagos, thereby regaining control. Obasanjo was appointed as head of state by the
Supreme Military Council.
Keeping the chain of command established by Murtala, Obasanjo pledged
to continue the programme for the restoration of civilian government in
1979 and to carry forward the reform programme to improve the quality of
public service.
The
second republican constitution, which was adopted in 1979, was modelled on the
Constitution of the United States, with provision for a
President,
Senate, and
House of Representatives. The country was prepared for local elections, to be followed by national elections, to return
Nigeria to civilian rule.
Oil boom
The military regimes of Murtala and Obasanjo benefited from oil
revenues that increased 350 percent between 1973 and 1974, when oil
prices skyrocketed, to 1979, when the military stepped down. Increased
revenues permitted government spending for infrastructure and
improvements on a large scale; critics thought it was poorly planned and
concentrated too much in urban areas. The
oil boom was marred by a minor recession in 1978-79, but revenues rebounded until mid-1981.
The government planned to relocate the federal capital from
Lagos to
Abuja,
a more central location in the interior of the country. It intended to
encourage industrial development inland and relieve the congestion in
the Lagos area. Abuja was chosen because it was not identified with any
particular ethnic group. Olusegun Obasanjo during his tenure from 1999
to 2007 was Minister of Petroleum.
Bold text
Industry
Industrialisation, which had grown slowly after
World War II
through the civil war, boomed in the 1970s, despite many infrastructure
constraints. Growth was particularly pronounced in the production and
assembly of consumer goods, including vehicle assembly, and the
manufacture of soap and detergents, soft drinks, pharmaceuticals, beer,
paint, and building materials. The government invested strongly in
infrastructure from 1975 to 1980, and the number of "parastatals" —
jointly government- and privately owned companies — proliferated. The
Nigerian Enterprises Promotion decrees of 1972 and 1977 further
encouraged the growth of an indigenous middle class.
Heavy investment was planned in steel production. With
Soviet assistance, a steel mill was developed at
Ajaokuta in
Kogi State,
not far from Abuja. Agriculture and associated projects generally
declined, although the government undertook large-scale irrigation
projects in the states of
Borno,
Kano,
Sokoto, and
Bauchi with
World Bank support.
The oil boom revenues led to a rise in per capita income, especially
for the urban middle class. Inflation, particularly in the price of
food, promoted both industrialisation and the expansion of agricultural
production. With the government encouraging food crops, the traditional
export earners — peanuts, cotton, cocoa, and palm products — declined in
significance and then ceased to be important at all. Nigeria's exports
became dominated by oil.
Green Revolution
The government embarked on a "
Green Revolution", distributing seed and fertilliser to farmers to increase nationwide productivity in farming.
Education
Education also expanded rapidly. At the start of the civil war, there
were only five universities, but by 1975 the number had increased to
thirteen, with seven more established over the next several years. In
1975 there were 53,000 university students. Similar advances were made
in the expansion in primary and secondary school education, particularly
in those northern states that had lagged behind others. During
Obasanjo's regime, universal Primary education was introduced
nationwide.
[15]
Political repression
Obasanjo was also accused of being responsible for political
repression. In one particular instance, the compound of Nigerian
musician and political activist
Fela Kuti
was raided and burned to the ground after a member of his commune was
involved in an altercation with military personnel. Fela and his family
were beaten and raped and his mother, political activist
Funmilayo Ransome Kuti,
was killed by being thrown from a window. Her coffin was carried to
Obasanjo's barracks as a protest against political repression.
[16]
Transition to democracy
On 1 October 1979, Obasanjo handed power to
Shehu Shagari,
a democratically elected civilian president, hence becoming the first
military head of state to transfer power peacefully to a civilian regime
in Nigeria. In late 1983, the military seized power again,
Gen. Buhari and
Gen. Idiagbon took over and
Gen. Babangida seized power from them in 1985.
Later career and second presidency
During the dictatorship of
Sani Abacha (1993–1998), Obasanjo spoke out against the
human rights abuses of the regime, and was imprisoned for alleged participation in an aborted coup based on testimony obtained via torture.
[17] He was released only after Abacha's sudden death on 8 June 1998. While in prison, Obasanjo became a
born-again Christian.
[18]
First term
In the
1999 elections, the first in sixteen years, Obasanjo decided to run for the presidency as the candidate of the
People's Democratic Party (PDP). Obasanjo won with 62.6% of the vote,
[19] sweeping the strongly Christian Southeast and the predominantly
Muslim north, but decisively lost his home region, the Southwest, to his fellow-Yoruba and Christian,
Olu Falae, the only other candidate. 29 May 1999, the day Obasanjo took office as the first elected and civilian
head of state in Nigeria after 16 years of military rule, is now commemorated as
Democracy Day, a
public holiday in Nigeria.
Obasanjo spent most of his first term travelling abroad. He succeeded
in winning at least some Western support for strengthening Nigeria's
nascent democracy. Britain and the United States, in particular, were
glad to have an African ally who was openly critical of abuses committed
in
Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe
at a time when many other African nations (including South Africa) were
taking a softer stance. Obasanjo also won international praise for
Nigeria's role in crucial regional peacekeeping missions in Sierra Leone
and Liberia. The international community was guided in its approach to
Obasanjo in part by Nigeria's status as one of the world's 10 biggest
oil exporters as well as by fears that, as the continent's most populous
nation, Nigerian internal divisions risked negatively affecting the
entire continent.
Some public officials like the National Assembly speaker and Senate
president were involved in conflicts with the president, who had to
battle many impeachment moves from both houses.
[20] Obasanjo managed to survive impeachment and was renominated.
Second term
Obasanjo was re-elected in a tumultuous
2003 election that had violent ethnic and religious overtones, his main opponent, fellow former military ruler General
Muhammadu Buhari
being a Muslim, who drew his support mainly from the north. Capturing
61.8% of the vote, Obasanjo defeated Buhari by more than 11 million
votes.
[21]
In November 2003, Obasanjo was criticized for his decision to grant asylum to the deposed
Liberian president,
Charles Taylor.
[22]
On June 12, 2006 he signed the
Greentree Agreement with Cameroonian President
Paul Biya which formally put an end to the
Bakassi peninsula border dispute.
[23] Even though the
Nigerian Senate
passed a resolution declaring that the withdrawal of Nigerian troops
from the Bakassi Peninsula was illegal, Obasanjo gave the order for it
to continue as planned.
[24]
Economic growth and debt payment
Before Obasanjo's administration Nigeria's GDP growth had been
painfully slow since 1987, and only managed 3 per cent between
1999/2000. However, under Obasanjo the growth rate doubled to 6 per cent
until he left office, helped in part by higher oil prices. Nigeria's
foreign reserves rose from $2 billion in 1999 to $43 billion on leaving
office in 2007. He was able to secure debt pardons from the
Paris and
London
club amounting to some $18 billion and paid another $18 billion to be
debt free. Most of these loans were accumulated from short term trade
arrears during the exchange control period. (Point of correction). Most
of these loans were accumulated not out of corruption but during a
period 1982-1985 when Nigeria operated exchange control regime that
vested all foreign exchange transactions on the central bank of Nigeria.
The naira exchange rate to the US dollar and other major currencies
during this period was highly regulated and artificially high. Nigerian
importers paid local currency equivalent to the central bank through
their local commercial banks but during the oil glut period of 1982-86
when foreign exchange was scarce the central bank did not have enough
foreign exchange to pay for current imports. This resulted in short term
foreign trade payment arrears. Short term trade arrears averaged about
US$3.0 billion each year between 1983 and 1986 when the new military
government of General Babangida floated the naira and imports were
thereafter paid for on a current basis. Nigeria stopped accumulating
short term foreign trade payment arrears beginning from 1986. Before
then yearly accumulation of around US$3.0 billion created the foreign
debt for Nigeria. Subsequent growth of Nigeria's debt was due to
interest on the previous years stock of short term trade debt owed to
export credit agencies and non-insured creditors (Source:CBN Annual
Reports 1983-1986. This information to refute the claim that corruption
was the source of Nigeria's past foreign debt is supplied by Osarenren
F. Asemota Former CBN Balance of Payment Staff).
Cabinet (Federal Executive Council)
Obasanjo made frequent changes to his cabinet of Federal Ministers
and Ministers of State during his two terms of office, and periodically
split or combined ministries. He made a major cabinet reshuffle in June
2000. In January 2001 he dissolved his cabinet, appointing Mr Mike
Umealo his speech writer, who turned down the offer in favour of
accepting a place at Leeds University to pursue a Post Graduate study in
Philosophy.
[25] In December 2004 he named 12 new ministers.
[26] In June 2005 he reshuffled his cabinet again.
[27] In January 2007 a few months before leaving office, he made yet another drastic overhaul.
[28]
Other officials
Third term agenda
Obasanjo was embroiled in controversy regarding his "Third Term Agenda," a plan to modify the
constitution
so he could serve a third, four-year term as President. This led to a
political media uproar in Nigeria and the bill was not ratified by the
National Assembly.
[29][30] Consequently, Obasanjo stepped down after the
April 2007 general election.
[31] In an exclusive interview granted to
Channels Television, Obasanjo denied involvement in what has been defined as "Third Term Agenda." He said that it was the
National Assembly (Nigeria) that included tenure elongation amongst the other clauses of the
Constitution of Nigeria that were to be amended. "I never toyed with the idea of a third term," Obasanjo said.
[32]
Obasanjo was condemned by major political players during the Third Term Agenda saga. Senator
Ken Nnamani, former
President of the Nigerian Senate claimed Obasanjo informed him about the agenda shortly after he became
President of the Nigerian Senate.
“Immediately, I became Senate President, he told me of his intentions
and told me how he wanted to achieve it. I initially did not take him
seriously until the events began to unfold”. He also insinuated that
Eight Billion Naira was spent to
corrupt
legislators to support the agenda. “How can someone talk like this that
he didn’t know about it, yet money, both in local and foreign
currencies, exchanged hands,” he asked.
Femi Gbajabiamila
corroborated Nnamani's account but put the figure differently, “The
money totalled over N 10 billion. How could N10bn be taken out of the
national treasury for a project when you were the sitting President, yet
that project was not your idea? Where did the money come from?” In the
following quotes, Nnamani said President
George W. Bush
warned Obasanjo to desist from his plan to contest presidential
election for the third term: “If you want to be convinced that the man
is only telling a lie, pick up a copy of the book written by
Condoleza Rice, the former Secretary to the Government of the United States of America. It is actually an
autobiography
by Rice. On page 628 or page 638, she discussed Obasanjo’s meeting with
Bush, how he told the former American President that he wanted to see
how he could amend the Constitution, so that he could go for a third
term. To his surprise, Bush told him not to try it. Bush told him to be
patriotic and leave by May 29, 2007.”
[33]
Post-presidency
He has become chairman of the
PDP Board of Trustees,
from which position he can control nominations for governmental
positions and even policy and strategy. As one Western diplomat said,
"He intends to sit in the passenger seat giving advice and ready to grab
the wheel if Nigeria goes off course."
[34] He voluntary resigned as the chairman board of trustees of the PDP in April, 2012.
[35] Afterwards, he withdrew from political activities with PDP.
Obasanjo is a member of
Club de Madrid,
[36]
an independent non-profit organization created to promote democracy and
change in the international community. Its members are over 100 former
democratically elected Presidents and Prime Ministers from more than 60
countries.
In March 2008, Obasanjo was indicted by a committee of the Nigerian
parliament for awarding $2.2bn-worth of energy contracts during his
eight-year rule, without due process. The report of this probe was never
accepted by the whole Nigerian parliament due to manipulation of the
entire process by the leadership of the power probe committee. It is not
on any official record that Chief Obassanjo was indicted.
[37]
Obasanjo is a member of the
Africa Progress Panel
(APP), a group of ten distinguished individuals who advocate at the
highest levels for equitable and sustainable development in Africa.
Every year, the Panel releases a report, the
Africa Progress Report,
that outlines an issue of immediate importance to the continent and
suggests a set of associated policies. In 2012, the Africa Progress
Report highlighted issues of Jobs, Justice, and Equity.
[38] The 2013 report will outline issues relating to oil, gas, and mining in Africa.
Obasanjo was recently appointed Special Envoy by UN Secretary General
Ban Ki-Moon to the war-torn
Democratic Republic of the Congo. He has held separate meetings with DRC President
Joseph Kabila and rebel leader
Laurent Nkunda.
AU Observation Head - President General Olusegun Obasanjo visits President Robert Mugabe -Zimbabwe General Election 2013
During the Zimbabwean election of July 2013, Obasanjo headed a delegation of
African Union election observers.
[39]
On May 2014, Obasanjo wrote to President
Goodluck Jonathan
requesting that he should mediate on behalf of the Nigerian government
for the release of the Chibok girls held by the Boko Haram militants.
[40]
On 16 February 2015, he quit the ruling party and directed a PDP's
ward leader to tear his membership card during a press conference.
[41] He was later to be known as the navigator of the newly formed opposition party, the APC
Olusegun Mathew Okikiola Aremu Obasanjo,
GCFR
