Nigerians remembered Obasanjo's tenure as military head of state chiefly for the fidelity with which his regime restored power to a civilian government on 1 October 1979. It was the basis for the high reputation that he bore for the next twenty years. In managing this transition, Obasanjo followed closely the political programme that Murtala had announced in October 1975, but he did not merely execute decisions already taken. The creation of new political institutions – the most novel that any West African state devised – raised major questions of principle and judgment, especially the question that was to trouble Obasanjo throughout his career: how much democracy was compatible with the unity of Nigeria?

The first stage in the transition process had taken place in October 1975 with the appointment of the 49-man Constitution Drafting Committee, which reported in September 1976. Their chairman explained, ‘What we have designed is to counter the difficulties of the past’, especially the weaknesses that had destroyed the First Republic and precipitated civil war. This explained their chief innovation, recommended to them by Murtala: an executive presidency on the American model rather than a British parliamentary system. The committee explained that the coexistence of a purely ceremonial president with an executive prime minister had been ‘meaningless in the light of African political experience and history’ and ‘difficult to maintain in practice’, as the conflict between Azikiwe and Abubakar in 1964 had shown.