Olusẹgun Ọbasanjọ

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Olusẹgun Ọbasanjọ
Olusẹgun Ọbasanjọ
Incumbent
Assumed office 
May 29, 1999
Vice President(s)   Atiku Abubakar
Preceded by Abdulsalami Abubakar
Succeeded by Incumbent
Born March 5, 1937
Abeokuta, Ogun State, Nigeria
Political party People's Democratic Party
Spouse Lynda Ọbasanjọ (ex-wife, deceased), Stella Ọbasanjọ (deceased)
Religion Christianity

Matthew Olusẹgun Aremu Ọbasanjọ (born March 5, 1937) (GCFR, Grand Commander of the Federal Republic[1]; transliterated: "Oluse-jUn ObA.san.jO") is a retired Nigerian Army General and politician. He has been the President of Nigeria since 1999. A Christian of Yoruba descent, Ọbasanjọ was a career soldier before serving twice as his nation's head of state, once as a military ruler, between 13 February 1976 and 1 October 1979 and again, since 1999, as elected president. His current home is Ado-Odo/Otta.

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[edit] Early life and first term as Head of State

Ọbasanjọ was born in Abeokuta, Ogun State but he is from Ota also in Ogun state, and he enlisted into the army in 1958 at the age of 21. He trained at Aldershot and was commissioned as an officer. Although he did not directly participate in the military coup of July 29, 1975, led by Murtala Ramat Mohammed, he was named Murtala's deputy in the new government. When Mohammed was assassinated in an attempted coup on February 13, 1976, Ọbasanjọ replaced him as head of state.

As chief of staff of Supreme Headquarters, Ọbasanjọ was Murtala Muhammed's deputy and had the support of the military. He had earlier commanded the federal division that took Owerri, effectively bringing an end to the civil war. Keeping the chain of command established by Murtala Muhammad in place, Ọbasanjọ 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 model for the 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 now ready for local elections, to be followed by national elections, that would return Nigeria to civilian rule.

The military regimes of Murtala Muhammad and Ọbasanjọ benefited from a tremendous influx of oil revenue that increased 350 percent between 1973 and 1974, when oil prices skyrocketed, to 1979, when the military stepped down. Increased revenues permitted massive spending that, unfortunately, was poorly planned and concentrated in urban areas. The oil boom was marred by a minor recession in 1978-79, but revenues rebounded until mid-1981 . The increase in revenues made possible a rapid rise in income, especially for the urban middle class. There was a corresponding inflation, particularly in the price of food, that promoted both industrialisation and the expansion of agricultural production. As a result of the shift to 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.

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. Furthermore, there was extensive investment 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.

Plans were undertaken for the movement of the federal capital from Lagos to a more central location in the interior at Abuja. Such a step was seen as a means of encouraging the spread of industrial development inland and of relieving the congestion that threatened to choke Lagos. Abuja also was chosen because it was not identified with any particular ethnic group.

Heavy investment was planned in steel production. With Soviet assistance, a steel mill was developed at Ajaokuta in Kogi State, not far from Abuja. The most significant negative sign was the decline of industry associated with agriculture, but large-scale irrigation projects were launched in the states of Borno, Kano, Sokoto, and Bauchi under World Bank auspices.

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. There were similar advances in primary and secondary school education, particularly in those northern states that had lagged behind.

Ọbasanjọ served until October 1, 1979, when he handed power to Shehu Shagari, a democratically elected civilian president, becoming the first leader in Nigerian history to surrender power willingly. In late 1983, however, the military seized power again. Ọbasanjọ, being in retirement, did not participate in that coup, and did not publicly support it.

[edit] Later career and presidency

During the dictatorship of Sani Abacha (1993–1998), Ọbasanjọ spoke out against the human rights abuses of the regime, and was imprisoned with the claim of planning a coup. He was released only after Abacha's sudden death on 8 June 1998. It was after his release from prison that Ọbasanjọ announced that he was now a born-again Christian.

In the 1999 elections, the first in sixteen years, he decided to run for the presidency as the candidate of the People's Democratic Party. Ọbasanjọ won with 62.6% of the vote, 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. It is thought that lingering resentment among his fellow-Yorubas about his previous military administration of 1976 to 1979, after which he handed power over to a government dominated by northerners rather than by Yorubas, contributed to his poor showing among his own people. May 29, the day Ọbasanjọ 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.

Olusẹgun Ọbasanjọ with Donald Rumsfeld
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Olusẹgun Ọbasanjọ with Donald Rumsfeld

Ọbasanjọ was re-elected in 2003 in a tumultuous 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, Ọbasanjọ defeated Buhari by more than 11 million votes. Buhari and other defeated candidates (including Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, the former Biafran leader of the 1960s), claimed that the election was fraudulent. International observers from the European Union, and the U.S. National Democratic Institute and International Republican Institute also reported widespread voting irregularities, including in the restive oil producing Niger delta where Ọbasanjọ's party had without explanation won close to 100% of the votes.

However, a delegation from the Commonwealth of Nations — led by representatives of former colonial power and trading partner Great Britain and African nations that had undergone troubled elections of their own — were less critical in their assessment. Much more worrying was the increasing polarisation of Nigeria along geographic and religious lines. Ọbasanjọ swept the South, including the south-west where he had lost four years earlier, but lost considerable ground in the North. For a nation in which ethnicity and religion ties in strongly to geography, such a trend was seen by many as particularly disturbing. Other commentators might simply note that in 2003, unlike 1999, Ọbasanjọ was running against a Northerner and could therefore expect his support to erode in the North.

Since leading a public campaign against corruption and implementing economic reforms in his country, he has been widely seen abroad as an African statesman championing debt relief and democratic institutions (thrice rejecting government change by coup in the continent of Africa as the chairperson of the African Union).He uses the campaign to fight his enemy's not to transform Nigeria.

In 2005 the international community gave Nigeria's government its first pass mark for its anti-corruption efforts. However a growing number of critics within Nigeria have accused Ọbasanjọ's government of selectively targeting his anti-corruption drive against political opponents and ethnic militants, ignoring growing concerns about wide-scale corruption within his own inner political circle. [citation needed]

On October 23, 2005 (just hours after the crash of Bellview Airlines Flight 210), the President lost one of his wives, Stella Ọbasanjọ, First Lady of Nigeria. Ọbasanjọ has many children, who live throughout Nigeria, the United Kingdom and the United States. [1]

Stella was not the first wife he lost. In 1987, his ex-wife Lynda was ordered out of her car by armed men, but was fatally shot for failing to move quickly. (Blaine Harden, Africa: Dispatches from a Fragile Continent, p. 283)

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Preceded by:
Murtala Mohammed		 Head of the Federal Military Government of Nigeria
13 February 1976 – 1 October 1979		 Succeeded by:
Shehu Shagari
Preceded by:
Joaquim Chissano		 Chairman of the African Union
2004–2006		 Succeeded by:
Denis Sassou-Nguesso
Preceded by:
Abdulsalami Abubakar		 President of Nigeria
29 May 1999 – present		 Incumbent

This article contains material from the Library of Congress Country Studies, which are United States government publications in the public domain.

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[edit] Notes

  1. ^ http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0307/04/i_if.01.html


Heads of State of Nigeria Flag of Nigeria
Nnamdi Azikiwe • Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi* • Yakubu Gowon* • Murtala Mohammed* • Olusẹgun Ọbasanjọ* • Shehu Shagari • Muhammadu Buhari* • Ibrahim Babangida* • Ernest Shonekan*† • Sani Abacha* • Abdulsalami Abubakar* • Olusẹgun Ọbasanjọ
*military     †interim
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