Olusegun Obasanjo

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Obasanjo, 2014
Obasanjo, 1978
Obasanjo with US President George W. Bush in France on June 1, 2003
Obasanjo, Brasília, September 2005

Olusegun Obasanjo ( Yoruba Oluṣẹgun Mathew Okikiọla Arẹmu Ọbasanjọ , born March 5, 1937 in Abeokuta , Nigeria ) was President of Nigeria from 1976 to 1979 and from 1999 to 2007.

Life

Obasanjo belongs to the Yoruba people , is a Baptist Christian and joined the Nigerian army in 1958 , where he quickly made a career as an officer . 1967-1970 he took part in the Biafra War . After the military coup of Murtala Mohammed in 1975 he was deputy vice-president of government. After the assassination of Muhammad in 1976 he became president and prepared the establishment of the Second Republic. On October 1, 1979, he passed power to President-elect Shehu Shagari .

From 1980 to the mid-1990s, Obasanjo held numerous international functions, including a. he was President of the Advisory Board of Transparency International (TI) and a candidate for the office of UN Secretary General. From 1995 to 1998 he was a political prisoner of the military dictator Sani Abacha . As a presidential candidate of the People's Democratic Party , he won the elections for the Fourth Republic and in 1999 became president again. His re-election took place in the controversial election of 2003, which he won with 61.94% of the vote. His strongest rival was the former military dictator Muhammadu Buhari .

Obasanjo is a co-founder of Transparency International and involved in the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative , an organization that seeks to disclose payments to governments for raw materials; under his presidency, Nuhu Ribadu headed the Nigerian anti-corruption agency. In 2003, Obasanjo started an anti-corruption campaign in collaboration with Transparency International. Nigeria, Africa's largest oil exporter, is set to move down from its third bottom place on the world's corruption list with the help of the organization he has long headed. On November 7, 2003, he presented his plan in Berlin, the headquarters of TI, under the title "Corruption: Nigeria's greatest challenge" together with the founder of TI, Peter Eigen . In July 2004 he was elected President of the African Union for one year .

In 2005, his wife Stella died during plastic surgery. In the April 2007 elections, Obasanjo did not run. However, he supported the Muslim candidate Umaru Yar'Adua .

Honors

literature

Web links

Commons : Olusegun Obasanjo  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. Ulrike Scheffer: Anti-corruption fighters Eigen on Nigeria: “A lot has already been achieved”. Der Tagesspiegel, April 20, 2007, accessed on November 26, 2014 .
  2. ^ 3rd African Union Summit. (No longer available online.) AU, July 2004, archived from the original on August 2, 2008 ; accessed on January 14, 2009 .