When Olusegun Obasanjo left office as President of Nigeria in May 2007, at the age of seventy, he suffered a torrent of abuse. The country's leading constitutional lawyer described the departing regime as ‘a bad dream, a nightmare for the Nigerian people and a disaster for the Rule of Law, democracy and good governance’. The playwright and Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka dubbed the retiring president a Master of Hypocrisy. A formerly close colleague called him ‘the most toxic leader that Nigeria has produced’. A political enemy recommended ‘that Obasanjo should go back to jail. I think he belongs there and should die there.’ The president's first wife published a memoir of their marriage alleging violence and neglect. His second son accused him publicly of adultery with the son's wife.

If this were the truth about Obasanjo, he would surely find a biographer. Yet the truth was more complicated and interesting. He had led a life of extraordinary activity and achievement. Born in an obscure Yoruba village in south-western Nigeria, too poor to go to university, he rose by ability, hard work, and sheer luck to lead the most populous black country on earth. As a soldier, he secured the victory in a civil war. Appointed military head of state at the age of 39, he returned Nigeria to democratic rule and retired to his farm, emerging to contribute to the destruction of apartheid, to contest election as Secretary-General of the United Nations, to challenge a military dictator, and to spend three years in prison, where a religious experience transformed his life.