Chief Olusegun Matthew Okikiola Ogunboye Aremu Obasanjo GCFR is a Nigerian general and statesman who served as Nigeria's head of state from 1976 to 1979 and later as its president from 1999 to 2007. Ideologically a Nigerian nationalist, he was a member of the Peoples Democratic Party from 1998 to 2015, and since 2018.
Born in the village of Ibogun-Olaogun to a farming family of the Owu branch of the Yoruba, Obasanjo was educated largely in Abeokuta, Ogun State. He joined the Nigerian Army and specialised in engineering and was assigned to the Congo, Britain, and India, rising to the rank of Major. In the late 1960s, he played a major role in combating Biafran separatists during the Nigerian Civil War, accepting their surrender in 1970. In 1975, a military coup established a junta with Obasanjo as part of its ruling triumvirate. After the triumvirate's leader, Murtala Muhammed, was assassinated the following year, the Supreme Military Council appointed Obasanjo as Head of State. Continuing Murtala's policies, Obasanjo oversaw budgetary cut-backs and an expansion of access to free school education.