OBASANJO, NIGERIA HERO?

?basanj? 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.


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. ?basanj? 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.

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.
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]

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 asDemocracy 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.

Olus?gun Obasanjo with Donald Rumsfeld at The Pentagon
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 Bakassipeninsula 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

Seal of the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria
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

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