03.10.14
No. 72
FOR GOD AND COUNTRY
www.leadership.ng
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NIGERIA'S FIRST FRIDAY NEWSPAPER
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Syndicated Negative Publicity Will Not Deter us – BBOG Group > Page 2
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8 DAYS To Go... FIRST GRADUATION CEREMONY OF 22 BAZE UNIVERSITY, ABUJA
283 Soldiers OnTrial For Mutiny, Others 4
See list on page 6 DHQ debunks latest 'Shekau' video
Real Reasons Obasanjo Went Back To School BY PAUL CHIAMA, Abuja
Chief Olusegun Matthew Aremu Obasanjo is a man of many intrigues. His life is full of many stories to tell and to read. It is either his exploits as a military head of state, his imprisonment and release from incarceration, his emergence as civilian president, his vehement letter writing, his control and influence from Ota Farm or his muscle-flexing with a sitting president. This time around, it has to do with his going back to school when he is, officially, close to 80 years. In this edition, LEADERSHIP Friday takes an indepth look at Obasanjo’s sudden enrolment at the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN) and the reasons why he decided to be addressed again as a student. Former president Olusegun Obasanjo is, to say the least, full of surprises. When a bloody coup took the life of General Murtala Ramat Muhammad and Obasanjo became the head of state, he surprised Nigerians and, indeed, the whole world when he kept faith with a handover date which culminated in the peaceful return of
power to a civilian government on October 1, 1979. That was at a time when top military officers were busy strategizing on how to topple one another and terminate successive regimes through military coup d’états. Obasanjo, as the man at the helm of affairs after the death of Murtala, simply behaved differently. He became the first military head of state to voluntarily hand over power to a civilian administration in 1979, an act he was rewarded for 20 years later on May 29, 1999, when General Abdulsalami Abubakar handed over power to him as an elected president. When Obasanjo was brought out of prison in 1998 following the death of General Sani Abacha who had thrown him into jail, he emphatically said ‘no’ to journalists who wanted to know if he was going to contest the presidency. He asked them a rhetorical question: how many presidents did Nigeria want to make out of him? That was ahead of 1999 presidential election which ➔ CONTINUED ON PAGE 4
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IllustrAtIon: Jameel Wubni