Obasanjo mounts the podium at AVMCC next Sunday

General Olusegun Obasanjo, the first Nigerian leader to preside over the governance of Nigeria both as a soldier and as a civilian politician, will on August 6, tell Nigerians what influence his Christian experience has had on his military career and his sojourn on the political terrain.

On that day, he will mount the podium at Archbishop Vining Memorial Church Cathedral, Ikeja, GRA, Lagos, on the invitation of the Torchbearers’ Society of that church, to deliver a lecture on: “God in my life.”

To receive him on his arrival at the AVMCC at 4pm, will be the Rt. Rev. Dr. James O. Odedeji, Bishop of the Diocese of Lagos West, and the Venerable Adegoke Agara, the Dean of AVMCC.

Obasanjo joined the Nigerian Army in 1958 and was commissioned the following year. He was promoted to Lieutenant in 1960. Shortly after Nigeria’s independence in 1960, he was sent to the Democratic Republic of Congo, on a United Nations’ peace-keeping force assignment.

After serving both as Commander of the Nigerian Army Engineering Corps and as Federal Commissioner of Works and Housing, between 1970 and 1975, on February 13, 1976, he was targeted for assassination in the aborted Col. Dimka insurrection. He escaped, but his friend and Commander-in-Chief, Gen. Murtala Mohammed, was killed.

As Head of the Federal Military Government of Nigeria and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces (1976-1979), he signaled his preparedness to return Nigeria to democracy by adopting the Second Republic Constitution and modeling it after the Constitution of the United States of America and presided over the voluntary transition to civil democratic rule in October 1979.Twenty years later, Chief Obasanjo was elected President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and was re-elected in 2003 on the ticket of the People’s Democratic Party.