Chief Olusegun Obasanjo

Chief Olusegun Mathew Okikiola Aremu Obasanjo was born on 5 March 1937 at Ibogun-Olaogun, an Egba village in the Ifo Local Government Area of Ogun State, the son of subsistence farmers Amos Adigun Obasanjo Bankole and Bernice Ashabi. He was educated at Baptist Day School Ibogun, Baptist Boys' High School Abeokuta (1952–57) and enlisted in the Nigerian Army in 1958 — commissioned via Mons Officer Cadet School Aldershot (1959) and trained at Royal College of Military Engineering Chatham, Indian Army School of Engineering Poona, and the Royal College of Defence Studies London (1973).

He served with the UN ONUC mission in the Congo (1960–61), commanded the 2nd Field Engineering Squadron during the Biafran war, and as Brigadier commanded the 3rd Marine Commando Division — accepting the surrender of Biafra from Lt-Col. Philip Effiong at Dodan Barracks on 13 January 1970. As Federal Commissioner for Works and Housing (1975–76) under Murtala he was Chief of Staff Supreme Headquarters; he became Head of State on 14 February 1976 the day after Murtala's assassination, completed Murtala's transition programme, promulgated the 1979 Constitution and on 1 October 1979 handed over to Alhaji Shehu Shagari — the first African military ruler to give up power voluntarily to an elected civilian. He retired to the Otta farm in Ogun, where he wrote My Command (1980), Nzeogwu (1987), Not My Will (1990) and a steady stream of memoirs.

In 1995 Sani Abacha detained him at Yola Prison on charges of involvement in the 'phantom coup' for which Major-General Shehu Musa Yar'Adua was convicted and died in detention. Released in June 1998 within days of Abacha's death, he became the People's Democratic Party (PDP) candidate and won the 27 February 1999 election against Chief Olu Falae of the AD–APP alliance. He was re-elected in April 2003 against Muhammadu Buhari. His administration carried out the GSM auction of January 2001 (the largest single regulatory event in modern Nigerian economic history), founded the EFCC under Nuhu Ribadu (2003) and the ICPC (2000), enacted the Pension Reform Act 2004, the Public Procurement Act 2007 and the Fiscal Responsibility Act 2007, and obtained the Paris Club exit of October 2005 negotiated by Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala — Nigeria's $30 billion external debt was written down with an $18 billion final payment, the largest debt-relief transaction ever recorded in sub-Saharan Africa.

His most controversial moment was the attempt to amend the 1999 Constitution to allow him a third term. Senate Bill SB 0021 of 2006 was defeated in the National Assembly on 16 May 2006 in one of the most consequential parliamentary votes of the Fourth Republic; the chief-whip operations led by Senate President Ken Nnamani, Senator David Mark, and the so-called 'PDP rebels' (Senators Ibrahim Mantu, Daisy Danjuma, Florence Ita-Giwa and others) held the line. He then engineered the controversial April 2007 election that produced his successor Umaru Musa Yar'Adua — an election whose flaws Yar'Adua himself acknowledged at his inauguration. Obasanjo handed over on 29 May 2007.

Since 2007 he has been the most prolific elder statesman of the Republic — chairman of the African Union Panel of the Wise, special envoy of the UN Secretary-General to the Great Lakes, mediator of the Tigray peace process (Pretoria Accord, November 2022), publisher of the three-volume memoir My Watch (2014–15) which forced a libel injunction from Vice-President Atiku Abubakar, and a constant epistolary critic of his successors via the much-publicised Obasanjo Open Letters tradition. His personal life: married Oluremi (later separated), married Stella Abebe (d. 2005, in office), and is father to a large family including Iyabo Obasanjo-Bello (former Senator, Ogun Central) and Olusegun Obasanjo Jr. His Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library at Abeokuta opened in 2017. He turned 88 in March 2025 and remains, with Gowon, one of two living former heads of state from the 1970s.