International Colloquium Burden and Blessing of Leadership: Reflections from Global Africa to the World

Address by President Olusegun Obasanjo, GCFR

Protocol

When I  was a  young  officer  in  the Nigerian  Army, one  of  my  commanding officers once said to me: ‘Obasanjo, let me tell you, the greatest burden a man can carry is his country on his shoulders. The greatest blessing he can also receive is that country’s gratitude.’ I did not fully understand those words then. But at 89 and with my experience, I   understand them better today — and I would only add that the burden and the blessing are, more often than not, the very same thing.

I stand before you today — before family members, friends, colleagues, men and women who have different and diverse opinions about me — not as a man who has all the answers, but as one who has asked more of life’s hardest questions than most, and has survived long enough to reflect upon them in some measure of honesty. Eighty-nine years. I have no doubt that God does not make mistake to keep me alive for these years, alive and reasonably healthy for my age.

I have known imprisonment and the presidency, war and peace, betrayal and redemption, exile and homecoming. I have buried friends and watched enemies outlive their enmity. I have watched Africa rise and stumble, rise again and stumble again. And from it all, one theme has  remained constant  through  these vicissitudes  of  life  –  leadership  with service. Its inculcation.

Its demands. Its contradictions. Its costs. And yes, its grace. That is what this colloquium invites us to examine: the burden and the blessing of leadership — not in the abstract language of political theory, but in the visceral, honest, and sometimes painful language of those who have actually led. I am grateful for this occasion, and I shall try to put to you some of my experiences.

THE BURDEN: WHAT LEADERSHIP ACTUALLY COSTS

Let me begin with the burden, because it is the part that those who covet power almost always underestimate and disregard. There  is  a particular  loneliness  that  comes  with  leadership  that  cannot  be described to anyone who has not experienced it. It is not the loneliness of being alone — for  a  leader,  particularly  a  political  leader,  is  never  alone.  There  are  always ministers,  advisers,  generals,  aides,  supplicants,  flatterers,  and  critics  surrounding you. The loneliness I speak of is the loneliness of final decision. The moment when all the briefings have been received, all the arguments have been made, all the options have  been  presented  —  and  you  alone  must  decide.  And  your  decision  will  affect millions  of  lives. That  weight  does  not  distribute  itself.  It  settles  on  one  pair  of shoulders – the leader’s shoulders.

I remember  few days before the Nigerian Civil War ended in January 1970. I was commanding the Third Marine Commando Division. My troops were positioned for the final push. Hundreds of thousands of Igbo civilians were trapped, starving, dying. On one side was the imperative of ending the war quickly to stop further suffering. On  the  other  was the  risk  that a military  advance  would deepen  the humanitarian catastrophe. No textbook told me what to do. No senior officer was going to make that call. It was mine alone. I made it. We saved life by not shelling Owerri.

History has rendered its verdict.  A leader also carries the burden of being the repository of other people’s hopes — hopes that are often larger than any human being can satisfy. When I was elected President  in  1999,  the  Nigerian  people  had  endured  years  of  military  dictatorship, economic stagnation, and institutional decay.

They did not elect a president, some of them thought; they elected a miracle performer. And when the miracle did not arrive in full measure overnight — as it never can — I could hear the murmurs of some of them.  This  is  the  burden:  to  be  elevated  by  hope  and  measured  by  time,  often simultaneously. Then  there  is  the  burden  of  principle.  Leadership  without  principle  is management  —  useful,  perhaps,  but  not  leadership.  True  leadership  requires  the willingness to hold a position when it is unpopular, to say no when yes would be more convenient,  to  name  a  truth  that  powerful  interests  wish  suppressed.

This  costs friendships. It costs alliances. It sometimes costs your freedom — as I learned in the Prison under Sani Abacha, where I was held for three and a half years, tried before a kangaroo tribunal, and very nearly executed. I want to say something directly to the young leaders in this room and to those who will read or hear these words: do not enter leadership imagining that it will be comfortable.  Do  not  seek  it  because  you  want  comfort.  The  burden  is  real.

The sacrifices are real. The nights of uncertainty, the mornings of what is happening, the weight of choices that have no good outcome — they are real. If you are not willing to bear this burden, please — for the sake of the people you would lead — step aside for  someone  who  is.  Leadership  is  not  a picnic and  if  you  are unfit for it and  you wangle  yourself  into  it  for  ulterior  motive,  you  will  be  of  great  disappointment  to yourself, to majority of those you lead and there will finally be the judgement of God.

THE BLESSING: WHAT LEADERSHIP GIVES BACK

And yet for me — and this is the paradox at the very heart of my life — I would do it all again as I have done it before to serve humanity and serve God.  Please don’t misunderstand me.  This is to underpin the burden and the blessings as I know that there is no way I could do it  again in  this lifetime. I am beyond  executive duty  or responsibility. But alongside the burden, there is a blessing that is equally without measure. The blessing of having been given the opportunity to matter and to serve. To have been placed, by providence and by circumstance, at the hinge of history — at moments when a decision, a word, an act of courage or compassion could change the trajectory of a nation, a continent, even the world. I would always thank God for what he enabled me to do with others in the final liquidation of colonialism and destruction of apartheid.

I think of the moment in 1979 when I handed power peacefully to a civilian government. Nigeria  had never  done that  before. The  men  around me  — some  of them  —  did  not  want  it  to  happen.  There  were  arguments,  pressure,  insinuations about ‘stability’ and ‘readiness.’ I held firm. And when President Shagari was sworn in, and I shook his hand and walked away from power, I felt something that I have never been able to fully describe. It was not pride, exactly. It was more like relief — the relief of having been tested and not been found wanting. The blessing of having done the right thing when doing the wrong thing would have been easier.

That is the first blessing of leadership: the opportunity for moral self-definition. Not who others  say you  are. Not who your enemies paint you to be. But who you discover yourself to be when the stakes are highest and the pressures are greatest. Leadership, at its best, is a crucible. It burns away pretence and reveals the metal beneath. The second blessing is service — genuine service that transforms lives.

When our administration secured the Paris Club debt relief, we did not merely restructure numbers on a ledger. We freed resources that went into schools, hospitals, roads, and infrastructure  for  millions  of  Nigerians  who  had  never  heard of  the  Paris  Club  and never would. When we established the EFCC and began the anti-corruption drive, we were not merely chasing headlines; we were trying to redirect the stolen patrimony of a people back to the people. And the intent — the daily, determined effort to make the lives of ordinary Nigerians better — that was real. And the blessing of having tried, earnestly, is something no one can take from me. I understand that someone with collusion of political and non-political  accomplices is regularly  allowed to  cart away billions of naira monthly for what he claimed was due to him from debt relief.

There was and there’s nothing done by anyone to deserve such outrageous action.  It is all fraud and corruption. And I can testify to that. The third blessing is the gift of perspective. To have led at the level at which I have  led,  for  as  long  as  I  have,  across  as  many  contexts  as  I  have  —  military command,  national  government,  continental  diplomacy,  crisis  mediation  —  is  to receive an education that no university can provide. I have sat across the table from Nelson Mandela and learned what moral courage looks like in its most refined form. I have negotiated with Charles Taylor and learned what happens when  leadership is entirely severed from conscience. I have worked with Kofi Annan and seen how quiet dignity can achieve what bluster cannot. Each encounter, each crisis, each failure and each success has been a tutorial in the infinite complexity of human affairs. That is a blessing beyond price.

AFRICA AND THE LEADERSHIP QUESTION

Ladies and gentlemen, I cannot stand before a colloquium on Global Africa’s leadership  reflections  without  speaking  directly  to  the  leadership  crisis  on  this continent — for that is what it is, and those of us who care about Africa must be willing to call it by its name. Africa  is  the  world’s  youngest  continent demography  wise  and  it  is  also  the most  resource-endowed.  It  sits  atop  the  mineral  wealth  that  powers  the  global economy,  feeds  its  people  from  the  world’s  largest  reserve  of  arable  land,  and produces a greater proportion of the world’s youth than any other region. By every measure of natural endowment, Africa should be a continent of prosperity, stability, peace,  security  and  global  influence.

Instead,  too  much  of  it  remains  a  theatre  of preventable disease and suffering, starvation, conflict, insecurity and poverty. The primary cause is not geography. It is not history alone, though history has certainly dealt this continent grievous blows. The primary cause is leadership failure — the failure of those entrusted with power to lead for the people and serve them rather than against them; to build institutions rather than subvert them; to welcome accountability  rather  than  flee  from  it,  to  ensure  equity  and  justice  rather  than enthrone injustice, inequality and inequity. I have seen it too many times.

A new leader arrives with promise. The people celebrate. International  partners extend goodwill.  And then,  gradually or  suddenly, the leader begins to govern for himself — for his family, his clan, his party, his bank account.  The  same  man  who  spoke  of  democracy  begins  to  grossly  engage  in undemocratic  practice,  enthrone  corruption  and  mismanagement  of  diversity  and economy. The same young reformer who promised accountability begins to silence the press, harass the judiciary, and intimidate  civil society.

All institutions become perverted only to serve the interest of the leader – his family, political accomplices and business interest. Why does this happen? I have thought about this for decades, and I believe the  answer  lies  in  a  failure  of  values  —  the  kind  of  deep,  internalised  values  that remain stable under pressure. It is not enough to know the right thing to do. One must be formed in such a way that doing the right thing is instinctive, even when the wrong thing is immediately profitable and inviting. This is why leadership formation — not merely leadership training — is one  of  the  most  urgent  tasks  facing  the  African  continent  today.  We must  invest  not  only  in  teaching  leaders  what  to  do,  but  in  forming leaders who are constituted and imbued with attributes and values to do it. That  is  the  conviction  behind  the  Obasanjo  55+20  Leadership  Framework. Those 55 attributes and 20 values did not emerge from a seminar room. They emerged from a lifetime of leading, failing, reflecting, correcting, and leading again and again. They are, in the most literal sense, blood knowledge — knowledge paid for in years of sacrifice, error, and hard-won wisdom. I offer them to the next generation not as a monument to myself, but as a toolkit for the task ahead.  They are not by anyway exhaustive, so you can add to them as you internalise them.

REFLECTIONS FROM THE GLOBAL AFRICAN DIASPORA

This colloquium speaks not only of Africa on the continent, but of Global Africa — the tens of millions of Africans and people of African descent who live, lead, and contribute across every corner of the world. I want to address them directly: the old Africa diaspora States and Communities and the new diaspora groups. The  African  diaspora  is  one  of  the  most  underutilised  assets  in  Africa’s development. Across the Americas, Europe, Asia, the Pacific and the Caribbean, there are  Africans  and  people  of  African  heritage  who  carry  within  them  the  intellectual capital,  the  professional  skills,  the  networks,  the  outreach,  the  goodwill  and  the resources that this continent desperately needs. And yet the relationship between the continent and its diaspora remains, in too many cases, fraught with misunderstanding, lack of knowledge of one another, mutual suspicion, received narratives and missed opportunity. I say to our brothers and sisters in the diaspora: Africa needs you just as you need Africa.

Not as philanthropists, not as those who send remittances and then return to comfortable distance. Not as critics who condemn from abroad what they refuse to help fix from within. Africa needs you as partners — partners and contributors who bring  your  whole  selves,  your  education,  your  experience,  your  connections,  your intellectual property and yes, your honest assessments, into the work of continental renewal and building. And I say to Africa’s leaders: the diaspora is not a threat to be managed or feared.

It  is  a  resource  to  be  embraced.  Create  the  conditions  —  legal, economic, social and emotional — that invite your people home. Reform the systems that drive them away. Build the institutions that give them confidence that their investment — of talent, of capital, of faith — will be protected and valued. The concept of Global Africa is not merely geographical. It is the recognition that  wherever  Africans  are,  they  carry  Africa  within  them.  Their  success  is  Africa’s testimony.  Their  leadership  in  global  institutions,  corporations,  universities,  and governments is Africa’s presence in the world. Let us be proud of that — and let us channel  it  purposefully.  It  is  Global  Africa  together  that  can  extricate  Africa  and diaspora Africa from enslavement in another form.

WHAT LEADERSHIP DEMANDS OF THIS GENERATION

I am 89 years old today. I do not say this for sympathy because I don’t need sympathy — I say it as a statement of fact that has implications for what I am about to say next. My generation of African leaders has had its time. We have done what we could — some of us better than others; some of us with more failures than we would wish to own. But we have had our time. The question that matters now is not what my generation did or failed to do. Not even what the generation before us did or did not do. The question is what this generation — your generation — will do with what has been inherited. And I want to speak with the directness that my age permits.

Let  us  take  democracy  seriously.  Not  as  a  system  to  be  manipulated  for electoral advantage, but as a covenant with the people — a genuine commitment to good  governance  that  is  accountable,  transformational,  transparent,  selfless  and oriented  toward  all-embracing  development,  growth  and  the  common  good. Democracy is imperfect. It is slow. It is frustrating at times. But the alternatives — as Africa has learned at great cost — are infinitely worse. Defend democratic institutions. Strengthen independent judiciaries. Protect free expression.

Let us in general rethink democracy  we practised, inherited from the colonial masters, in context and in content to  serve  Africa  with  our  special  situations  in  a  world  whose  institutions  were  not created by ourselves for ourselves.  Let us have democratic institutions to which we contribute with others for ourselves or in the alternative create for ourselves in context and content a democracy that will work for us and deliver in all respects.   Africa’s governance problem is, fundamentally, an institutional and personality problem. We have produced extraordinary individual leaders — Mandela, Nkrumah, Nyerere, Sankara, Machel — but we have not consistently produced the institutional frameworks  that  make  good  governance  endure  and  last  regardless  of  who  the individual leader is. We must solve the personality problem and solve the institutional problems.

When  an  entire  country’s  trajectory  depends  on  the  character  of  one person, that country is permanently fragile. Build the courts for justice and not for the highest bidder. Build the regulatory bodies that are not subject to whims and caprices. Build  the  civil  service  that  delivers  service.  Build  the  universities  whose  products compare with products of best universities in the world. Build the institutions that will outlast all of us and which will not be derailed and destroyed with abuse and misuse. We must integrate Africa. The African Continental Free Trade Area is one of the most important developments on this continent in a generation. Economic integration — genuine integration, not merely the signing of agreements — has the potential to transform Africa’s  position  in  the  global  economy,  to  create  the  market  depth  that attracts investment, generates employment, and builds the productive capacities that development  requires.

Do  not  allow  narrow  nationalism  to  strangle  continental possibility and common and shared prosperity. We must invest in our young people. Africa’s median age is below 20. That is either a demographic dividend or a demographic disaster — the difference depends entirely on whether those young people are educated, healthy, skilled, employed, and empowered. A continent that fails its youth does not merely waste a generation; it plants  the  seeds  of  instability  that  will  haunt  the  next  several  generations.  With 24million Nigerian children that should be in school out of school, you have surely got waiting recruits for the next generation of Boko Haram and bandits.

GRATITUDE AND CLOSING REFLECTIONS

I am grateful — profoundly and  overwhelmingly grateful — for this long life and for all that it has contained with fairly good health. I am grateful to God, whose hands I have felt upholding me even in the darkest of times — in prison, in combat, in the depths of political betrayal. My faith is not a performance. It is the bedrock on which everything I have done and endured has rested. I am grateful to Nigeria — this complex, magnificent and potently great country that gave me everything and asked everything of me in return. Nigeria is not merely a  nation;  it  is  an  argument  —  an  ongoing,  unresolved,  occasionally  violent  but ultimately vital argument about what kind of people we are and what kind of future we  can  build  together.

I  love  this  country with  all  its  contradictions,  and  I  will  die loving  it.  I  love  Nigeria  wholesomely  and  totally  without  bias  or  prejudice  against anyone or any group.  But we all have to make Nigeria our own and our home.  It will not work if Nigeria is for the South or for the North, the East or West and for Moslems or Christians only.  Those who perpetrate such idea or sentiment are great enemies of Nigeria.  Nigeria cannot survive on hegemony. I am grateful to Africa — this ancient, wounded, resilient, astonishing continent that is, I remain convinced, on the verge of its  greatest century, the 21st century. Africa’s  time  is  coming  here  and  now.

The  world  that  dismissed  us,  exploited  us, enslaved us, colonised us, discountenanced us, condescended to us, will one day in this century reckon with us as a continent that has found its voice, its confidence, and its institutional foundations. I may not live to see that day in its fullness, but I have lived long enough now to see its dawn.  The generation after mine will do most of the work.  You must braze yourselves up for the task.  The world will feel it owes you nothing, but you can get a lot out of the world if you know how to. And I am grateful to all of you — those who have come from near and far to be  part  of  this  colloquium,  to  engage  with  these  ideas,  to  carry  the  conversation forward. Leadership is not a solo endeavour.

It is a collective project and effort. Every person in this room who takes leadership seriously, who holds leaders accountable, who raises the next generation with values and vision, is part of the answer that Africa needs. Let me close with a word I received from an elder of my community in Abeokuta many years ago. He said: ‘The tree that bears the most fruit bends the lowest.’ I have tried to live by that wisdom. As I cross my 89th year, I bow — in gratitude, in hope, and in continued commitment to the continent and the people I have spent my life serving. And I will continue to serve until my last breath. Africa is not a problem to be managed. Africa is a promise to be fulfilled. And  leadership  —  honest, courageous,  self-giving,  incorruptible, transformational leadership — is how that promise gets kept. Thank you. God bless Nigeria. God bless Africa.

For my final note in this Address, I want to point your attention to the work of some never-do-well.  They publish and circulate a fake paper credited to me that I am writing, giving notice of my death, Pafuka.  That is their wish and surely not God’s wish for me.  God has assured me that He has more for me to do on earth and He has given me the wherewithal to do it.  And those who wish otherwise are going to be dealt with by God Himself. I dey kampe as usual. God bless.

OLUSEGUN OBASANJO, GCFR Former President, Federal Republic of Nigeria Former Head of State and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces Abeokuta, Ogun State, Nigeria 3 March 2026

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