page_title: Olusegun Obasanjo
section_title: Military Head of State: 1976–1979
hierarchical_section_title: Olusegun Obasanjo / Military Head of State: 1976–1979
caption_attribution_description: Jimmy Carter with Lt. Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria
context_page_description: Chief Olusegun Matthew Okikiola Aremu Obasanjo, GCFR, is a Nigerian military and political leader who served as military head of state from 1976 to 1979 and later as President of Nigeria from 1999 to 2007. Ideologically a Nigerian nationalist, he was a member of the People's Democratic Party.
  Born in the village of Ibogun-Olaogun to a farming family of the Owu branch of the Yoruba, Obasanjo was educated largely in Abeokuta. Joining the Nigerian Army, where he specialised in engineering, he spent time assigned in the Congo, Britain, and India, rising to the rank of major. In the latter part of the 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 Mohammed, 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 in access to free school education.
caption: Obasajo with U.S. President Jimmy Carter in the White House in 1977
exif: {"Image SubfileType": "Full-resolution Image", "Image ImageWidth": "2050", "Image ImageLength": "3000", "Image BitsPerSample": "[8, 8, 8]", "Image Compression": "Uncompressed", "Image PhotometricInterpretation": "2", "Image DocumentName": "24-0576M.TIF", "Image ImageDescription": "Portrait", "Image StripOffsets": "305", "Image SamplesPerPixel": "3", "Image RowsPerStrip": "3000", "Image StripByteCounts": "18450000", "Image PlanarConfiguration": "1", "Image DateTime": "1998:05:08 12:30:48", "Image Artist": "NARA", "Image ExifOffset": "2370", "Image XPTitle": "[80, 0, 111, 0, 114, 0, 116, 0, 114, 0, 97, 0, 105, 0, 116, 0, 0, 0]", "Image XPAuthor": "NARA", "Image XPSubject": "[80, 0, 111, 0, 114, 0, 116, 0, 114, 0, 97, 0, 105, 0, 116, 0, 0, 0]", "Image Padding": "[]", "EXIF Padding": "[]"}