Nigeria - Olusegun Obasanjo.

Obasanjo remains a powerful man under Yar'Adua's presidency. He is still the most powerful man in the ruling PDP, although Yar'Adua has begun to sideline his political mentor. A military man turned world statesman, Obasanjo has put experienced figures in charge of government. Through them he has taken all the important decisions.

A Christian and an ethnic Egba Yoruba, Obasanjo was born on March 5, 1937 in Abeokuta, capital of Ogun state, about 100 km north of Lagos. He attended the Baptist Boys' High School along with Moshood Abiola. (A Yoruba Muslim who won the presidential election in June 1993; Abiola was later jailed by the then military dictator, Gen. Abacha, and died in prison just before his release in June 1998).

Obasanjo was a teacher for a year before joining the army in 1958. After training in the UK and India, he rose quickly within the ranks. During the Biafran civil war, when the Ibo tribe tried to secede, he was put in charge of a commando unit which obtained the surrender of the rebel leader, effectively ending the war in 1970. After a course at Sandhurst military academy (UK) in 1974, Obasanjo became chief of general staff.

In 1975, after a longtime military dictator indefinitely postponed a promised return to civilian rule, Gen. Murtala Mohammed staged a coup and began a plan to hand over power to civilians in 1979, with Gen. Obasanjo as his deputy. After Gen. Mohammed was assassinated in a failed coup in February 1976, Obasanjo was named president. Elections were held in 1979 as planned and Obasanjo stepped down for a civilian president, Shehu Shagari, in a move which earned him lasting esteem. But to many of his fellow Yoruba, it was the biggest of many perceived acts of betrayal.

The elections had been close and Obasanjo had called them in favour of Shagari, a northerner, over an opponent who was a Yuruba. In Lagos and the rest of Yorubaland, Obasanjo was blamed for a bloody crackdown on students protesting tuition hikes. He was particularly resented in the subsequent years for having kept close to powerful northern generals like Ibrahim Babangida, who was to become a dictator from 1985 to 1993.

In foreign policy, it was under Obasanjo that Nigeria began flexing its muscles, emboldened by the gush of oil money. Nigeria became the leading African opponent of white-ruled regimes in South Africa, Namibia and Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). It became the centre for liberation movements whose leaders operated out of Lagos, with Obasanjo remaining close to Nelson Mandela who was then in jail. After Jimmy Carter became US president, the two leaders established a friendship which has lasted until today.

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