Statecraft & Independence
Landmark
Olusegun Obasanjo
born 1937
Handed power to civilians in 1979, then returned as an elected president
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Why they are here
A military head of state who voluntarily handed power to an elected government in 1979 — almost unheard of at the time — and came back twenty years later as an elected president.
Olusegun Obasanjo was a career soldier who commanded the division that accepted Biafra's surrender in 1970, ending the civil war. He became head of state in 1976 after the assassination of Murtala Mohammed, and did the thing that makes him unusual: he ran the transition his predecessor had promised, held elections, and in October 1979 handed the country to the civilian Shehu Shagari and went home to farm.
In the Africa of 1979 a military ruler surrendering power voluntarily to an elected opponent was close to unprecedented, and it is the single fact most often cited in his favour.
He spent the 1980s and 1990s as an elder statesman, chairing international panels on Africa and debt. In 1995 Sani Abacha's government charged him with plotting a coup on evidence widely regarded as fabricated; he was sentenced to life, served three years in conditions that nearly killed him, and was released after Abacha died.
He was elected president in 1999, at the return of civilian rule, and served two terms. His government negotiated the Paris Club deal that wrote off most of Nigeria's external debt, created the anti-corruption commissions, liberalised telecommunications — mobile phones went from a few hundred thousand lines to tens of millions — and steadied a federation that had just spent sixteen years under soldiers. He mediated in Liberia, Darfur, the DRC and Ethiopia afterwards.
In the Africa of 1979 a military ruler surrendering power voluntarily to an elected opponent was close to unprecedented, and it is the single fact most often cited in his favour.
He spent the 1980s and 1990s as an elder statesman, chairing international panels on Africa and debt. In 1995 Sani Abacha's government charged him with plotting a coup on evidence widely regarded as fabricated; he was sentenced to life, served three years in conditions that nearly killed him, and was released after Abacha died.
He was elected president in 1999, at the return of civilian rule, and served two terms. His government negotiated the Paris Club deal that wrote off most of Nigeria's external debt, created the anti-corruption commissions, liberalised telecommunications — mobile phones went from a few hundred thousand lines to tens of millions — and steadied a federation that had just spent sixteen years under soldiers. He mediated in Liberia, Darfur, the DRC and Ethiopia afterwards.
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