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President of Nigeria HE Chief Olusegun Obasanjo delivers Commonwealth Lecture

15 March 2005

The President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria HE Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, who is also Chairperson-in-Office of the Commonwealth, delivered the Eighth Commonwealth Lecture in London on Tuesday 15 March 2005. The Lecture was on the theme: The Commonwealth in the 21st Century: Prospects and Challenges.

The Nigerian President called on the Commonwealth to strengthen its role in conflict resolution by establishing an early warning system.

President Obasanjo highlighted some of the Commonwealth's achievements such as its role in assisting with the collapse of apartheid in South Africa, and spearheading international condemnation of military rule in Nigeria.

The Nigerian President also called on the Commonwealth to strengthen its role in conflict resolution by establishing an early warning system. Reacting to the recently released Report of the Commission for Africa, President Obasanjo applauded the British Government's initiative in setting up the Commission and to call for it to show political will and courage to carry forward the Report's recommendations.

Chief Obasanjo was re-elected President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria in 2003. He was first elected in 1999. Prior to that, he had been appointed president in 1976 to succeed General Murtala Muhammed, who was assassinated in an attempted coup d'etat. Three years later, President Obasanjo became the first Nigerian military ruler to voluntarily hand over power to an elected civilian government when he was succeeded by Alhaji Shehu Shagari. He was promoted to the rank of full general and then retired from military service and became involved in international mediation efforts in Namibia, Angola, South Africa, Mozambique and Burundi. Between 1985 and 1986 he was co-chair of the Commonwealth Eminent Persons Group on South Africa.

 

Note to Editors:

The inaugural Commonwealth Lecture, entitled Human Rights: Is there a Commonwealth Perspective? was delivered in 1998 by Professor Amartya Sen, Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, and the 1998 Nobel Laureate for Economics. Subsequent annual lectures have been delivered by the Rt Hon Malcolm Fraser, former Prime Minister of Australia, who spoke on Globalisation and the Nation State; Kofi Annan, the United Nations Secretary-General and winner of the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize whose title was Africa: Maintaining the Momentum; Mrs Graça Machel, President of the Foundation for Community Development, whose topic was Gender Inequality: From Roles to Rights; Mary Robinson, then United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, who spoke on Human Rights in the Shadow of 11 September; and by the founder and managing director of Bangladesh's Grameen Bank Professor Muhammad Yunus, whose topic was Halving Poverty by 2015: we can actually make it happen. Last year's lecture was delivered by the former Prime Minister of Canada, the Rt Hon Jean Chrétien PC on the theme Making Progress Through Multilateralism.

The Commonwealth Lecture is delivered annually and is sponsored by the Commonwealth Foundation in collaboration with the Commonwealth Secretariat, the Royal Commonwealth Society, the Royal Over-Seas League, the Cambridge Commonwealth Trust, the Institute of Commonwealth Studies and the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association.