In 1970 Obasanjo returned to peacetime soldiering as Brigadier commanding the Corps of Engineers in Lagos. Professionally, the next five years were perhaps the quietest of his life. Privately, they were a time of turmoil. And in 1975 everything would change.

He was becoming a property-owner and a businessman In the early 1960s he had invested ‘Dag's Dash’ in parcels of land at Ibadan, Kaduna, and Lagos. In 1970 he bought a former Lebanese company in Ibadan and secured an agent to run it. By 1974, with a salary approaching $15,000 a year, he had two houses in Lagos, one in Ibadan, another (built at a cost of about ($60,000) in Abeokuta, and planned ‘to build a few houses that are commercially viable’, for ‘After paying the mortgage on them, they would provide regular income before and during retirement’, which, for a soldier, was likely to come early. In seeking security through urban property, Obasanjo was obeying a powerful Yoruba tradition and demonstrating, as a man born and brought up ‘in farm’, that he had achieved respectability. Yet he was still an outsider, unashamed of his village origins. Somewhat awkward, earnest, moody, but humorous and sensitive, he was alternately withdrawn and outgoing. Notoriously careful with money, he lived modestly, not seeking popularity through the generosity of a Yoruba ‘big man’.

His family life was more turbulent. His marriage to Oluremi under English law had been in the monogamous, companionate style common among young, educated Yoruba and perhaps especially desired by educated women like Oluremi.