Former president delivers raw reflection at 50th memorial lecture, admits leaders after Murtala failed to groom successors—himself included
Fifty years after bullets cut short the life of Nigeria's most transformative military leader, the man who stepped into his shoes has broken a lifetime's silence with a confession as searing as it is rare.
Former President Olusegun Obasanjo, speaking at the Murtala Muhammed International Lecture and Leadership Conference in Abuja, took the audience back to February 13, 1976—the day General Murtala Ramat Mohammed was gunned down in a failed coup, and the day Obasanjo's own journey to the pinnacle of power began .
"When Murtala was assassinated, I was there. There was nothing left for me in the military government. We had given our best," Obasanjo told the gathering, organised by the Murtala Muhammed Foundation to mark 50 years since the late leader's death .
THE DAY THE GOVERNMENT DIED
The assassination, carried out by Lt. Colonel Bukar Suka Dimka and a faction of officers, claimed not only Mohammed but also his aide-de-camp, Lieutenant Akintunde Akinsehinwa . Their car was ambushed in Lagos's Ikoyi district en route to Dodan Barracks. Within hours, the government was in turmoil—but not, as Obasanjo now reveals, without a moment of painful reckoning.
"We had to look back and ask ourselves where we had gone wrong, and we realised there had been serious negligence in security," Obasanjo said. "That shaped what we needed to do thereafter" .
What made the betrayal particularly devastating, he disclosed, was the identity of the plotters. Some were people close to Murtala—an aide, a colleague from the Defence College. The shock of trusted associates turning assassins forced the military leadership to confront an uncomfortable truth: personal loyalty is not a substitute for institutional safeguards .
"As we say where I come from, when a young man falls, he looks forward; when an elder falls, he looks back. We looked back, and that was how the issue of security was fundamentally rejigged" .
THE SUCCESSION QUESTION: MURTALA'S GREATEST GIFT
Obasanjo, who succeeded Mohammed as Head of State after the coup was crushed, argued that the late leader's most enduring achievement was not policy or reform—it was his ability to leave behind someone who could continue his vision.
"The greatest achievement of Murtala was that he left behind a successor who could carry on after him," Obasanjo declared .
Then came the confession that silenced the hall.
"The failure of leaders after him, including myself, is that we have not been able to do the same" .
The admission was striking not only for its honesty but for its rarity. Few African leaders, living or dead, have publicly acknowledged failing to groom successors. Obasanjo's words laid bare a continent-wide dysfunction: the tendency of leaders to treat power as personal property, not institutional trust.
A LEADERSHIP OF MODESTY AND MISSION
Obasanjo painted a portrait of Mohammed as a leader who lived his values. He recalled that the late general's residence in Kano had no gates—an unimaginable detail in today's Nigeria, where political figures dwell behind fortress-like walls. When offered an official guest house, Mohammed reportedly rejected it, believing it was "over-furnished" .
"What was considered excessive then would today be seen as modest," Obasanjo observed—a quiet indictment of the opulence that now defines public office .
The 1975 leadership cadre, he said, was driven by discipline, patriotism and a clear sense of mission. They were not in government to accumulate wealth or entrench themselves, but to stabilise a nation still healing from civil war and prepare it for a return to democratic rule .
'WE PUT OUR HOUSE IN ORDER FIRST'
Obasanjo also revisited the period leading to the end of the civil war, revealing that internal divisions within the Federal Government nearly derailed the military effort. He recalled returning from the front lines to argue that Nigeria needed to stabilise its political order before it could effectively prosecute the war.
"We said, let us put our house in order first," he said. Without reconstituting the political structure, effective command and accountability would have been impossible .
The decision, though difficult, proved critical. It established a principle that Obasanjo argues has been lost: governance must precede action, and institutions must precede individuals.
THE POLICY REVERSAL THAT HAUNTS NIGERIA
Beyond security and succession, Obasanjo offered a sharp critique of Nigeria's habit of reversing course whenever a new administration takes power. He cited the rice import ban as a case study in self-inflicted wounds.
By July 1979, when the military handed over to civilians, Nigeria was on the brink of self-sufficiency in rice production. The government had banned rice imports, confident that domestic output could meet national demand. Within months of civilian rule, the ban was lifted—not on economic grounds, but to allow the new administration to allocate import licences to political supporters .
"Since that ban was lifted, we have not recovered. That is why we are still importing rice today," Obasanjo lamented .
He recounted a damning episode: one import licence recipient ordered rice from America and instructed the suppliers to add $5 million to the invoice. He then travelled to New York and demanded $2.5 million of that sum as kickback. The suppliers refused, offering only $1 million. He had taken no risk, made no investment, yet walked away with a million dollars—courtesy of a policy reversal designed to reward political loyalty .
"These are the kinds of things that go wrong," Obasanjo said .
A CONTINENT'S UNFINISHED BUSINESS
The conference, themed "Has Africa Come of Age?", drew an array of leaders including former President Goodluck Jonathan, former Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, former Ghanaian President John Kufuor, and the Emir of Kano, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi .
Each offered their own diagnosis of Africa's stalled development. But it was Obasanjo who anchored the conversation in lived experience—not abstract theory, but the weight of having been present when a government fell, having carried the burden of succession, and having watched later leaders, himself included, fail to replicate Murtala's greatest gift.
"We cannot make progress if we take two steps forward, one step sideways and three steps back, which is what we have been doing," he concluded .
THE LEGACY THAT REMAINS
Fifty years after his death, Murtala Mohammed remains a figure of outsized significance in Nigeria's political imagination—a leader whose 200-day tenure accomplished what many cannot achieve in decades. His photograph still hangs in government offices. His face adorns the N20 note. And now, half a century later, the man who succeeded him has offered the most personal reflection yet on what was lost that February morning, and what has been missing ever since.
Posts
0 Comments