Obasanjo handed power to civilians in 1979, then returned twenty years later
As Nigeria's military ruler, Olusegun Obasanjo did something rare: he organised an election in 1979 and stepped aside for the winner. Later imprisoned under Sani Abacha on coup charges he denied, he emerged a born-again Christian, won the presidency in 1999, and went on to chair the African Union.
Obasanjo was born, by the estimate on his passport, on 5 March 1937 in Ibogun-Olaogun, to a Yoruba farming family of the Owu branch; no contemporary record of the date exists. Raised a Baptist, he studied at schools in Abeokuta partly funded by state grants, became a keen Boy Scout, and dropped his forename Matthew as an anti-colonial gesture. He joined the army, trained as an engineer, served in the Congo, Britain and India, and during the Nigerian Civil War of the late 1960s accepted the Biafran surrender in 1970.
A 1975 coup placed him in a ruling triumvirate. After gunmen killed its leader, Murtala Muhammed, in 1976, the ruling military council made Obasanjo head of state. He cut budgets, widened free schooling, moved Nigeria closer to the United States and backed movements opposing white minority rule in southern Africa. After the 1979 vote he transferred power to the elected president Shehu Shagari and retired to farm at Ota, writing four books.
Openly critical of Sani Abacha, who seized power in 1993, he was convicted in 1995 of involvement in a planned coup while insisting he was innocent. Prison turned him toward providentialist Christianity. Freed after Abacha died in 1998, he won the 1999 election for the Peoples Democratic Party. As president he removed the military from politics, confronted ethnic, religious and secessionist violence, pulled troops out of Sierra Leone and privatised state enterprises to tackle debt. Re-elected in 2003, he chaired the African Union from 2004 to 2006, but his bid to scrap presidential term limits failed.
Admirers count him among the leading figures of Africa's second post-colonial generation, crediting the democratic handover of the 1970s and his push for continental cooperation. Critics accuse his governments of corruption and human rights abuses and argue he grew too focused on holding power. In retirement he earned a doctorate in theology from the National Open University of Nigeria.
Source: Olusegun Obasanjo
