The former president of Nigeria sets out the Christian principles of leadership that every nation needs

Feb 11, 2018 by Jill

By Ruth Samuel, OCRPL/CEN:

Chief Olusegun Matthew Obasanjo, president of Nigeria from 1976-1979 and again from 1999-2007, spoke to over two hundred postgraduates, mainly from Africa, at the Blavatnik School of Government in Oxford on Monday January 8^th on Leadership for Transformation of African Societies.

He is a former chairman of the African Union and with the Archbishop of Canterbury and sixteen other world figures is on the new Advisory Board on Mediation at the United Nations. He is also chair of the panel of advisers of the Africa Initiative for Governance. (www.aigafrica.com) .

A Baptist Christian and a career soldier he became the chief army engineer. His name means that God is victorious. He received the sword of surrender at Owerri to end the Biafran civil war in 1970. He was invited to become the military head of state in 1976. He was the first African leader voluntarily to hand over power to a civilian government in 1979. He attributes this partly to his British military training in which the military remain out of politics. He had planned such a hand over from the start and went back to his farm.

In December 2017 he earned a Ph D from the Open University of Nigeria on Liberation Theology, investigating aspects of liberation in different religious and ethnic groups.

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