title: Olusegun Obasanjo

text: Obasanjo was also accused of being responsible for political repression. In one famous instance, the compound of the Nigerian musician and political activist Fela Kuti, Kalakuta Republic, was raided and burned to the ground after a member of his entourage was involved in an altercation with military personnel. Fela and his family were beaten and raped and his aged mother, the political activist and founding mother Chief Funmilayo Ransome Kuti, was thrown from a window. This resulted in serious injuries, and eventually led to her death. Fela subsequently carried a coffin to the then presidential residence at Dodan barracks in Lagos as a protest against the government's political repression.


title: Olusegun Obasanjo

text: Obasanjo was eager to establish Nigeria as a prominent leader in Africa and under his tenure its influence in the continent increased. He revived Gowon's plan to hold the second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture in Nigeria; it took place in Lagos in February 1977, although domestic critics argued that it was too expensive. Obasanjo gave low priority to the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and angered many of its Francophone members after insisting that, as the largest financial contributor to the organisation, Nigeria should host the organisation's headquarters in Lagos. Relations with nearby Ghana also declined; in 1979, Nigeria cut off oil supplies to the country to protest the execution of political opponents by Jerry Rawlings' new military junta.


title: Olusegun Obasanjo

text: Under Obasanjo, Nigeria loosened its longstanding ties with the United Kingdom and aligned more closely with the United States. Obasanjo was favourable to the U.S. government of Jimmy Carter, who was elected in 1976, because of Carter's commitment to ensuring majority rule across southern Africa. Carter's ambassador to Nigeria, Andrew Young, formed a close personal friendship with Obasanjo, while Carter visited Nigeria in 1978. However, the decision to shift allegiances was made for pragmatic rather than ideological reasons; the discovery of oil in the North Sea meant that the UK had become a competitor rather than a customer of Nigerian oil. Obasanjo's government was also angry that the UK refused to extradite Gowon and suspected that the British government might have been involved in the coup against Murtala. For these reasons, in 1976 it considered suspending diplomatic relations with the UK, but ultimately did not. Obasanjo nevertheless refused to visit the UK and discouraged his officials from doing so. Relations were further damaged when Margaret Thatcher became British Prime Minister in 1979, initiating a warmer British approach to the white minority administrations of Rhodesia and South Africa. In response, Nigeria seized a British tanker that was believed to be transporting Nigerian oil to South Africa, banned British firms from competing for Nigerian contracts, and nationalised British Petroleum's Nigerian operations.


title: Olusegun Obasanjo

text: Obasanjo was also eager to hasten the end of white minority rule in southern Africa; according to Iliffe, this became "the centrepiece of his foreign policy". Nigeria gave grants to those fighting white minority rule in the region, allowed these groups to open offices in Lagos, and offered sanctuary to various refugees fleeing the governments of southern Africa. Taking a hard line against the apartheid regime in South Africa, Obasanjo announced that Nigeria would not take part in the 1976 Summer Olympics because New Zealand, which was competing, had sporting ties with South Africa, a country that was banned from competing due to apartheid. In 1977, Obasanjo barred any contractors with South African links from operating in Nigeria; the main companies that were hit were British Petroleum and Barclays Bank. That same year, Nigeria hosted the United Nations Conference for Action Against Apartheid in Lagos, while Obasanjo visited the U.S. in October where he urged the country to stop selling arms to South Africa. While in the country he addressed the United Nations General Assembly and two weeks later Nigeria received a seat on the United Nations Security Council.


title: Olusegun Obasanjo

text: Opposition to white minority rule in Rhodesia had sparked the Rhodesian Bush War and Obasanjo's government maintained that armed struggle was the only option for overthrowing Rhodesia's government. He encouraged unity among the various anti-government factions there, urging Robert Mugabe, the head of ZANU, to accept the leadership of his rival, Joshua Nkomo of ZAPU. In 1977, the UK and US drew up proposals for a transition to majority rule in Rhodesia, amid a period in which the country would be under the management of United Nations forces. Obasanjo backed the plan, and visited Tanzania, Zambia, Mozambique, and the Democratic Republic of Congo to urge their governments to do the same. However, after Thatcher became UK Prime Minister, Nigeria distanced itself from British efforts to end the Rhodesian Bush War and was excluded from any significant role in the UK-brokered process that led to multi-racial democratic elections in Rhodesia.


title: Olusegun Obasanjo

text: As head of state, Obasanjo attended OAU summits. At that held in July 1977, he proposed the formation of a standing committee to mediate disputes between OAU member states. At the 1978 conference, he warned of interference from both sides in the Cold War. At the next conference, he urged the formation of a Pan-African military which could engage in peace-keeping efforts on the continent. To promote Nigeria's role internationally, Obasanjo involved himself in various mediation efforts across Africa. In 1977 he persuaded Benin and Togo to end their border dispute and reopen their frontier. He also attempted to mediate a quarrel among several East African states and thus prevent the collapse of the East African Community, but failed in this attempt. As the chair of the OAU mediation committee, he tried to mediate the Ogaden dispute between Ethiopia and Somalia but was again unsuccessful. He also failed to mend the breach that had emerged between Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo.


title: Olusegun Obasanjo

text: On behalf of the OAU, Obasanjo held a conference at Kano to mediate the Chadian Civil War. Several factions agreed to a ceasefire, to form a government of national unity, and to allow Nigerian troops to act as peacekeepers. The war nevertheless continued and Nigeria responded by cutting off its oil supply to Chad. A second conference on the conflict took place in Lagos in August 1979, resulting in the formation of another short-lived transitional government. In the final year of his military government, he headed an OAU mission to resolve the conflict in Western Sahara.


title: Olusegun Obasanjo

text: The military government has assembled a constituent drafting committee to devise a new constitution which could be used amid a transfer to civilian rule. The committee argued that Nigeria should change its governance system, which was based on the British parliamentary system, to one based on the U.S. presidential system whereby a single elected president would be both head of state and head of government. To avoid this president becoming a dictator, as had happened elsewhere in Africa, it argued for various checks on their power, including a federal structure whereby independent elected institutions would exist at the federal, state, and local level. The draft constitution was published in October 1976 and debated in public for the following year. A constituent assembly met to discuss the draft in October 1977. The assembly deadlocked over what role to give sharia law in the constitution. Obasanjo called the assembly together and warned them of the social impact of their decision, urging them to take a more conciliatory attitude. In September 1978, the Supreme Military Council announced the new constitution; it had made several amendments to the version put forward by the constituent assembly.


title: Olusegun Obasanjo

text: Along with the new constitution, Obasanjo lifted the ban on political parties. A variety of groups then formed to compete in the ensuing election, most notably the Unity Party of Yoruba, the Nigerian People's Party, and the National Party of Nigeria. Obasanjo was angered that many of the politicians were making promises that they could not keep. The elections took place over the course of July and August 1979. Turnout was low, at between 30 and 40 percent of legally registered voters, and there was rigging on various sides, although it was peaceful. There was debate as to who won the presidential vote, and Obasanjo refused to adjudicate, insisting that the Electoral Commission take on that role. They declared that Shehu Shagari was the winner, something that the runner up, Obafemi Awolowo, unsuccessfully challenged at the Supreme Court. Shagari took office in October 1979; at his inauguration ceremony, Obasanjo presented Shagari with a copy of the new constitution. This marked the start of Nigeria's Second Republic.


title: Olusegun Obasanjo

text: Obasanjo's role in returning Nigeria to civilian rule would form the basis of the good reputation he retained for the next two decades. However, various domestic and foreign individuals, including the Zambian President Kenneth Kaunda and Togo President Gnassingbé Eyadéma, urged him to remain in power. His refusal to back Awolowo, a fellow Yoruba, earned him the enmity of much of the Yoruba elite. Awolowo accused Obasanjo of orchestrating Shagari's victory, something Obasanjo strenuously denied.


title: Olusegun Obasanjo

text: Before he left office, in April 1979, Obasanjo promoted himself to the role of general; as a four-star general he continued to receive a salary from the state. Having left office in October, he returned to Abeokuta. Following a six-week course at an agricultural training college, Obasanjo then set himself up as a farmer, hoping to set an example in encouraging agricultural self-reliance. He obtained at least 230 hectares of land in Ota on which to establish his farm, there moving in to a brick farmhouse. There was local hostility to his obtaining so much land, and much litigation was brought against him because of it. His agricultural activities were organised through his Temperance Enterprises Limited, later renamed Obasanjo's Farms Limited. He devoted particular attention to poultry farming; by the mid-1980s, his farm was hatching 140,000 chicks a week. He developed farms elsewhere in Yorubaland, and by 1987 he employed over 400 workers at eight locations. As did other senior Yoruba figures, Obasanjo sponsored poor students who attended his former school in Abeokuta.


title: Olusegun Obasanjo

text: Obasanjo grew critical of Shagari's civilian government, deeming the president weak and ill-prepared. Nigeria entered economic recession due to fluctuations in global oil prices. In May 1983, senior military figures asked Obasanjo to take over control in the country again, but he declined. In December, they overthrew Shagari without Obasanjo's involvement, in a coup that saw little violence. Muhammadu Buhari became the new military head of state. Obasanjo was initially supportive of Buhari's government, stating that representative democracy had failed in Nigeria. He praised Buhari's War Against Indiscipline, his halving of imports, and his restoration of a balanced budget. In August 1985, Buhari was also overthrown, with the Army Chief of Staff Ibrahim Babangida taking power. Obasanjo was critical of some of the economic reforms that Babangida introduced, including the devaluation of the naira. By 1992, his opposition to Babangida's rule had led him to call for a re-democratisation of Nigeria. He also began to reject the economic indigenisation policies of the 1970s, arguing that the constitution should prohibit the confiscation of foreign investments. Instead, he thought the government should emphasise private-led development. He became increasingly concerned by rapid population growth, a topic he had ignored while in power, urging Nigerians to have smaller families "in their own economic and national socio-economic interest".


title: Olusegun Obasanjo

text: During the eleven years after Obasanjo left office, he published four books. In 1980, Obasanjo was a Distinguished Fellow at the University of Ibadan, where he wrote "My Command", an account of his experiences during the civil war; it was published in November that year. Some readers criticised what they saw as Obasanjo's disloyalty to Murtala Muhammed, while Robert Adeyinka Adebayo, a senior Yoruba political figure, urged for the book to be withdrawn to prevent it sowing division. A more positive assessment was made by his friend, Ken Saro-Wiwa, who called it masterly but believed that it had involved much editorial assistance. In 1987 he published "Nzeogwu", a memoir of his friend Chukwuma Nzeogwu, with whom he had served in the Congo. 1989 saw the publication of Obasanjo's next book, "Constitution for National Integration and Development", in which he warned against Babangida's argument for instituting a two-party system in Nigeria. In 1990 his third book, "Not My Will", was published. It provided an account of his time governing the country.


title: Olusegun Obasanjo

text: Seeking to retain influence on the global stage, Obasanjo launched the Africa Leadership Forum from his Ota farm. From 1981 to 1982 he also sat on the Palme Commission, a group chaired by the former Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme which discussed disarmament and international security. Obasanjo followed this with membership on similar panels for the United Nations, the World Health Organization, and the Inter-Action Council of Former Heads of Government. When Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, the UN Secretary-General, fell ill, Obasanjo was considered as a potential successor. After Pérez de Cuéllar announced his resignation, Obasanjo began campaigning to replace him. At a vote of the UN Security Council, he came third, with Egypt's Boutros Boutros-Ghali taking on the role. He left his home on several visits; in 1986 he visited Japan, and in 1987 the U.S.


title: Olusegun Obasanjo

text: Amid a dispute in the Commonwealth of Nations over the UK's more lenient view of South Africa, it was agreed that an Eminent Persons Group (EPG) would be formed to initiate dialogue with the South African government in the hope of encouraging it toward dismantling apartheid. At the recommendation of Nigeria's Deputy Secretary-General of the Commonwealth, Emeka Anyaoku, Obasanjo was nominated to co-chair the group alongside former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser. Obasanjo reluctantly agreed. In February 1986 he and Fraser travelled to Cape Town where they asked to meet with the imprisoned anti-apartheid activist Nelson Mandela, a prominent member of the banned African National Congress (ANC). Obasanjo alone was permitted to meet with Mandela; he later commented that he was greatly impressed by him. Obasanjo then met with senior ANC figures in exile in Lusaka.


title: Olusegun Obasanjo

text: In March 1986, the entirety of the EPG visited South Africa, during a period of growing domestic unrest and violence. There they met with senior government figures, including Prime Minister P. W. Botha, whom Obasanjo later described as the most intolerant man he had ever met. The EPG's report stated that while a majority of South Africans desired a non-violent negotiated settlement between the government and anti-apartheid groups, the former was unwilling to contemplate this and had made no significant progress towards ending apartheid. The EPG thus proposed that further international pressure was necessary. A Commonwealth committee accepted the report's findings, with the UK dissenting; this left Obasanjo further frustrated with Thatcher. The Commonwealth then commissioned him to head a committee to determine what the Frontline States needed to defend themselves from South African incursions.


title: Olusegun Obasanjo

text: After Botha was replaced by F. W. de Klerk, the latter freed Mandela from prison. One of Mandela's first foreign trips was to Nigeria, where he visited Obasanjo at his home. Two months later, Obasanjo led a Nigerian delegation to South Africa for talks with prominent political figures. In September 1991 he visited again, where he urged the Zulu leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi to engage in negotiations with other factions to help end apartheid and hold a fully representative election.


title: Olusegun Obasanjo

text: Obasanjo also worked on developments elsewhere in Africa. He visited Angola twice during 1988, contributing to efforts to end the civil war there. He also visited Sudan three times between 1987 and 1989, unsuccessfully encouraging negotiations to end the Second Sudanese Civil War. He then served as an observer at the 1994 Mozambican general election. In 1994 and 1995 he visited Burundi, where he worked to calm tensions between the Hutu and Tutsi ethnic groups. He had begun calling for closer integration across Africa, proposing this could be achieved through the formation of six regional confederations. In June 1987, he had sketched out plans for an Africa Leadership Forum, which would help to provide skills and training for politicians from across the continent. It began holding meetings, known as the Farm House Dialogues, from Obasanjo's home about six times a year. It also held quarterly international meetings and issued a quarterly magazine, "Africa Forum", between 1991 and 1993.


title: Olusegun Obasanjo

text: Obasanjo voiced concern that, despite his professed claims to support a return to democracy, Babangida had no intention of stepping down as military head of state. After the presidential primaries were cancelled in 1992, Obasanjo and Anthony Enahoro launched the Association for Democracy and Good Governance in Nigeria. The group's inaugural meeting brought together 31 domestic political figures at Ota in May 1993. An election followed in June 1993, which saw low turnout. Moshood Abiola of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) claimed victory, but this was challenged in court. Babangida then annulled the election result, promising a second election soon after. The SDP opposed any second election as they argued that their candidate had already won the first. Babangida then agreed to step down in favour of an interim civilian government, led by Ernest Shonekan, which took power in August 1993 and set out plans for new elections in February 1994.


title: Olusegun Obasanjo

text: Meanwhile, Sani Abacha consolidated his control of the military and in November 1993 pressured Shonekan into resigning, allowing himself to take power. Obasanjo had telephoned Abacha prior to the coup, urging him not to take this course of action. After Abacha had seized power, he asked Obasanjo to meet with him. The latter did, but refused to support Abacha's government until it announced a date for its own departure. Abacha then abolished the existing political parties and democratic institutions and called for politicians from various backgrounds to join his Federal Executive Council; Obasanjo refused to nominate anyone for this council.


title: Olusegun Obasanjo

text: Obasanjo began warning that Nigeria was headed towards another civil war along ethnic divisions, and in May 1994 he and Yar'Adua launched the National Unity Promoters, a group dedicated to preventing this outcome. In June, Abiola unilaterally declared himself Nigeria's president and was arrested for treason. Although Obasanjo refused to endorse Abiola's claim, he did advise Abacha not to arrest him. He then led a group of traditional leaders at a meeting in which they attempted to initiate a dialogue between Abacha and Abiola. His refusal to support Abiola angered many Yoruba and Obasanjo's property in Yorubaland was attacked. Obasanjo was upset by what he saw as punishment for not backing Yoruba sectarian interests.


title: Olusegun Obasanjo

text: In March 1995, Obasanjo was in Denmark for a UN Summit on Social Development in Copenhagen. While there, he heard that Yar'Adua had been detained and that he would probably face the same fate if he returned to Nigeria. He nevertheless argued that he had done nothing wrong and thus agreed to return. Once at Lagos Airport, his passport was confiscated and the next day, police picked him up from his Ota home. The police accused Obasanjo of links to a coup against Abacha being plotted by Brigadier General Lawan Guadabe. Obasanjo was moved between various detention centres, while former US President Carter personally contacted Abacha requesting Obasanjo's release. Obasanjo was then returned to Ota, where he was placed under house arrest for two months, during which time he was denied access to media, the telephone, or visitors.


title: Olusegun Obasanjo

text: Another of those accused of being involved in the plot, Colonel Bello-Fadile, a military lawyer, had been tortured, during which he signed a statement that he had gone to Ota to inform Obasanjo about the coup as it was in preparation. This was used as evidence to charge Obasanjo with concealment of treason, a capital offense under Nigerian law. He was then taken to the State Security Interrogation Centre at Ikoyi. Abacha insisted that Obasanjo be tried before a military court, which took place on 19 June 1995. At the trial, Obasanjo denied that Bello-Fadile had ever met with him. Bello-Fadile also maintained that he had signed the statement implicating Obasanjo under duress, but the court rejected this retraction.


title: Olusegun Obasanjo

text: On 14 July, the court sentenced Obasanjo to 25 years in prison; Yar'Adua and fourteen others also accused of being part of the conspiracy were sentenced to death. Obasanjo later called it his "saddest day". After the US President Bill Clinton stated that his country would embargo Nigerian oil if these executions took place, Abacha commuted their sentences to imprisonment and reduced Obasanjo's sentence to 15 years.


title: Olusegun Obasanjo

text: Obasanjo spent the next four months at the Ikoyi Centre, where he was initially chained up in solitary confinement. He was then transferred to Lagos' main prison, Kirikiri, where he spent time in the prison hospital for his hypertension and diabetes. Conditions in Kirikiri were overcrowded and unsanitary, with Obasanjo stating that he "would not wish it on my worst enemy". There, Bello-Fadile apologised to Obasanjo for having implicated him, at which Obasanjo forgave him. A note written by Bello-Fadile explaining the situation was then smuggled out of the prison and published, helping to demonstrate Obasanjo's innocence.


title: Olusegun Obasanjo

text: After several weeks, Obasanjo and the other alleged conspirators were moved to Jos prison in the central plateau, Plateau State where they spent several months. Obasanjo was initially given only the Bible and Quran to read, but gradually allowed a wider range of literature. Writing material was also granted to him, allowing him to correspond with various people and institutions, and eventually Stella was permitted to visit him once a month. Both Mandela and Pope John Paul II called for his release, with Indian and German foundations both awarding him international prizes. The Africa Leadership Forum produced two volumes of letters and essays written in his honour; the Forum itself had been forced to relocate to Accra in Ghana to avoid persecution from Abacha's government.


title: Olusegun Obasanjo

text: In early 1996, Obasanjo was moved from Jos to the more remote prison at Yola, Adamawa State. There, he was allowed to cultivate a garden. Obasanjo related that in prison he deepened his Christian faith and grew closer to God, becoming a born-again Christian. From that point, Christianity played a much larger role in his personal world-view. At Yola, he preached 28 weekly sermons after visiting ministers were temporarily banned. He wrote these sermons down, allowing them to be published when he was released. Obasanjo also tried to reform some of the younger prisoners, following up on their progress once he became a free man. Obasanjo feared that he would be poisoned, particularly amid public speculation that Yar'adua's death had been caused by deliberate poisoning.


title: Olusegun Obasanjo

text: Abacha died suddenly in June 1998, after which the military commanders appointed Lieutenant General Abdulsalami Abubakar as his successor. A week later, Abubakar ordered Obasanjo's release, sending a plane to return him to Ota. Eager to return Nigeria to civilian rule, Abubakar dissolved the country's existing parties and institutions and announced a plan that would lead to a civilian president being installed in May 1999.


title: Olusegun Obasanjo

text: Now a free man, Obasanjo travelled to South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States, where he underwent medical treatment. New political parties were forming across Nigeria, one of the largest of which was the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), an umbrella group that sought to be sufficiently broad that if in power it would deter future coups. Prominent PDP members proposed Obasanjo as an ideal presidential candidate. They felt that he could command international respect and that as a military figure he could hold the country together against future coups and secessionist movements. They also argued that Nigeria needed a southern president to balance out its previous northern leadership and that Obasanjo had proved himself as a southerner who had no partisan prejudice against the north.


title: Olusegun Obasanjo

text: Friends and family urged him not to run, saying that he would damage his good reputation or be killed. Obasanjo appeared reluctant, but on 28 October he joined the PDP and a week later announced that he was putting himself forward to be the party's presidential nominee. In his campaign, he emphasized his desire to restore what he deemed the legacy of good governance when he left office in 1979. At a fundraising dinner, he gained N356 million, of which N120 million had been donated by industrialist Aliko Dangote. Most of these donations came from military men and the new business class. He toured the country, giving speeches and seeking audiences with influential persons; courting state governors was a significant element of his approach. His campaign overshadowed that of his main rival, Alex Ekwueme, who was widely mistrusted by northerners and the military.


title: Olusegun Obasanjo

text: The PDP was gaining ground in Nigeria, proving the most successful party in the local government elections of December 1998, the state elections in January 1999, and the Senate and House of Representatives elections in February 1999. On 14 February 1999, a PDP convention was called to select its presidential candidate. Obasanjo received 1,658 votes, to 521 for Ekwueme, and 260 for the other five candidates. Seeking a northerner as the PDP's vice presidential candidate, Obasanjo selected Atiku Abubakar. The presidential election took place on 27 February; Obasanjo's sole opponent was the APP's Olu Falae. About a quarter of those eligible to vote did so, and there was some rigging although no violence. The official tally gave Obasanjo 63 percent of the vote; he was the loser in all six states of his native Yorubaland.


title: Olusegun Obasanjo

text: After having it exorcised, Obasanjo moved into the presidential complex at Aso Rock in May. On 29 May he took the presidential oath in Abuja's Eagle Square. While appointing his new government, he selected an even number of ministers from the north and south of Nigeria, although the fact that a majority were Christian upset some Muslim northerners. Critics generally characterised Obasanjo's cabinet as being too old and conservative, as well as lacking in experience, especially when dealing with economic matters. During his first administration the levels of freedom experienced by Nigerians increased; freedom of the press allowed for considerable criticism of the president.


title: Olusegun Obasanjo

text: In the initial months of his presidency, Obasanjo retired around 200 military officers, including all 93 who held political positions, thus making a coup by experienced officers less likely. He also moved the Defence Ministry from Lagos to Abuja, ensuring it was brought under more direct government control.


title: Olusegun Obasanjo

text: Obasanjo was re-elected in a tumultuous 2003 election that had violent ethnic and religious overtones. His main opponent, fellow former military ruler General Muhammadu Buhari, was Muslim and drew his support mainly from the north. Capturing 61.8% of the vote, Obasanjo defeated Buhari by more than 11 million votes.


title: Olusegun Obasanjo

text: In November 2003, Obasanjo was criticized for his decision to grant asylum to the deposed Liberian president, Charles Taylor. On 12 June 2006, he signed the Greentree Agreement with Cameroonian President Paul Biya which formally put an end to the Bakassi peninsula border dispute. Even though the Nigerian Senate passed a resolution declaring that the withdrawal of Nigerian troops from the Bakassi Peninsula was illegal, Obasanjo gave the order for it to continue as planned.


title: Olusegun Obasanjo

text: In his second term, Obasanjo continued to ensure the expansion of the country's police force, which rose to 325,000 in 2007.


title: Olusegun Obasanjo

text: Ongoing rural violence between Muslims and Christians in Plateau State led Obasanjo to declare a state of emergency there in May 2004, suspending the state government and installing six months of military rule. On 22 August 2005, the then governor of Abia State, Orji Uzor Kalu, submitted a petition alleging corrupt practices against Obasanjo to the EFCC.


title: Olusegun Obasanjo

text: Obasanjo was embroiled in controversy regarding his "Third Term Agenda," a plan to modify the constitution so he could serve a third, four-year term as president. This led to a political media uproar in Nigeria and the bill was not ratified by the National Assembly. Consequently, Obasanjo stepped down after the April 2007 general election. In an exclusive interview granted to Channels Television, Obasanjo denied involvement in what has been defined as "Third Term Agenda". He said that it was the National Assembly (Nigeria) that included tenure elongation amongst the other clauses of the Constitution of Nigeria that were to be amended. "I never toyed with the idea of a third term," Obasanjo said.


title: Olusegun Obasanjo

text: Obasanjo was condemned by major political players during the Third Term Agenda saga. Senator Ken Nnamani, former President of the Nigerian Senate claimed Obasanjo informed him about the agenda shortly after he became President of the Nigerian Senate. “Immediately, I became Senate President, he told me of his intentions and told me how he wanted to achieve it. I initially did not take him seriously until the events began to unfold.” He also insinuated that Eight Billion Naira was spent to corrupt legislators to support the agenda. “How can someone talk like this that he didn’t know about it, yet money, both in local and foreign currencies, exchanged hands,” he asked. Femi Gbajabiamila corroborated Nnamani's account but put the figure differently, “The money totaled over N10 billion. How could N10bn be taken out of the national treasury for a project when you were the sitting President, yet that project was not your idea? Where did the money come from?” In the following quotes, Nnamani said President George W. Bush warned Obasanjo to desist from his plan to contest presidential election for the third term: “If you want to be convinced that the man is only telling a lie, pick up a copy of the book written by Condoleezza Rice, the former Secretary to the Government of the United States of America. It is actually an autobiography by Rice. On page 628 or page 638, she discussed Obasanjo’s meeting with Bush, how he told the former American President that he wanted to see how he could amend the Constitution so that he could go for a third term. To his surprise, Bush told him not to try it. Bush told him to be patriotic and leave by May 29, 2007.”


title: Olusegun Obasanjo

text: Economic policyWith the oil revenue, Obasanjo created the Niger Delta Development Commission and implemented the Universal Basic Education Program to enhance the literacy level of Nigerians. He constituted both the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission. Resuscitated the National Fertilizer Company in Kaduna and (Onne) Port Harcourt. Obasanjo increased the share of oil royalties and rents to the state of origin from 3 to 13 percent.


title: Olusegun Obasanjo

text: Before Obasanjo's administration, Nigeria's GDP growth had been painfully slow since 1987, and only managed 3 percent between 1999 and 2000. However, under Obasanjo, the growth rate doubled to 6 percent until he left office, helped in part by higher oil prices. Nigeria's foreign reserves rose from $2 billion in 1999 to $43 billion on leaving office in 2007.


title: Olusegun Obasanjo

text: He was able to secure debt pardons from the Paris and London club amounting to some $18 billion and paid another $18 billion to be debt free. Most of these loans were accumulated from short-term trade arrears during the exchange control period. (Point of correction). Most of these loans were accumulated not out of corruption but during a period 1982–1985 when Nigeria operated exchange control regime that vested all foreign exchange transactions on the central bank of Nigeria.


title: Olusegun Obasanjo

text: When Obasanjo took office, Nigeria's economy was in a poor state. Inflation had averaged about 30% a year throughout the 1990s, and by 2001 around 20% of Nigerian adults were unemployed. Poverty was widespread, with Obasanjo's government seeking to alleviate this by paying N3,500 a month to around 200,000 people to conduct routine tasks such as sweeping and mending roads. This project was then replaced with a National Poverty Eradication Programme which focused on generating youth employment, rural infrastructure, and conservation. In 2000, Obasanjo's government doubled the legal minimum wage.


title: Olusegun Obasanjo

text: He invited the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to review Nigeria's economy and offer advice on how to improve it; they warned that the government was overspending. In 2001, Obasanjo declared himself "a believer in market efficiency" and related that he had seen the damage caused by "public sector mismanagement" first hand. However, while expressing his commitment to the Washington Consensus of free markets, privatisation, and limited state expenditure, government expenditure as a share of GDP rose from 29% in 1997 to 50% in 2001. In January 2000, Nigeria received a US$1 billion stand-by loan, which allowed the government to enter debt rescheduling negotiations with its creditors. Obasanjo's government benefited from high international oil prices during his first presidential term. It planned both to increase Nigeria's oil output and to produce increasing quantities of liquefied natural gas, which was first exported from the country in 1999.


title: Olusegun Obasanjo

text: Obasanjo was determined to abolish the petrol subsidy, increasing prices to commercial rates. The Nigerian Labour Congress called a general strike in protest for June 2000 and Obasanjo ultimately compromised, reducing the subsidy rather than abolishing it. This situation allowed Obasanjo to be portrayed as an "enemy of the poor" on the public imagination. To further reduce expenditure, Obasanjo turned to privatisation, forming a National Council on Privatisation in July 1999. When he took office, Nigeria's federal government owned 588 public enterprises, accounting for over 55% of external debt, and Obasanjo hoped that many of these, although not those involved in oil production, could be sold off. Privatisation was not popular with Nigeria's population, having only 35% support according to a 2000 opinion survey. Obasanjo was also keen to negotiate debt reduction. He insisted that Nigeria's debts were so large as to be unpayable and that they threatened its economy and democracy. Although Canada, Italy, and the U.S. cancelled Nigeria's debts, these were small, and the country's major creditors, the largest of which was the UK, refused.


title: Olusegun Obasanjo

text: Obasanjo blamed many of Nigeria's economic problems on endemic corruption; in 2000, Transparency International ranked it the world's most corrupt country. Several days after taking office he presented an Anti-Corruption Bill to the National Assembly, although this aroused much opposition from critics who thought it gave the government excessive powers. Compromises were reached that watered-down Obasanjo's proposals, allowing him to sign the new law in June 2000. There is no evidence that corruption declined in Nigeria in Obasanjo's first term, and his government did nothing to check Nigeria's endemic low-level corruption, which was widespread at the state and local government levels.


title: Olusegun Obasanjo

text: Public health was also a key issue in Nigeria. During the 1990s, Nigeria had spent about 0.2% of its GDP on public health services, the joint lowest percentage in the world. Obasanjo's government increased this to over 0.4%. The most urgent health crisis impacting Nigeria was the HIV/AIDS epidemic, with Obasanjo immediately ordering a situation report on the topic after taking office. He then established a Presidential Committee on AIDS, which he headed as chair, and created a National Action Plan Committee to prepare a campaign for 2000–03 which would focus on publicity, training, counselling, and testing to combat the virus. To advance public health more broadly, he launched a new primary care campaign that used local government funds to try and build a clinic in every one of Nigeria's 774 local government areas.


title: Olusegun Obasanjo

text: One of Obasanjo's major tasks, in which he succeeded, was to improve Nigeria's international reputation, which had been tarnished under Abacha. He spent over a quarter of his first term abroad, having visited 92 countries by October 2002. In October 1999, Obasanjo launched a South African-Nigerian Bi-National Commission to discuss cooperation between the two countries, the largest powers on Sub-Saharan Africa. Obasanjo retained Nigeria's close ties with the U.S., bringing in U.S. advisers to help train the Nigerian military. He had close ties with U.S. President Bill Clinton and also got on with Clinton's successor George W. Bush; Bush visited Abuja in 2000, and Obasanjo visited Washington DC in 2006. Pursuing warmer relations with the U.K. than he had in the 1970s, he attended his first Commonwealth Conference in November 1999 and hosted that in December 2003, where he received an honorary knighthood from British Queen Elizabeth II.


title: Olusegun Obasanjo

text: On taking office, Obasanjo had vowed to withdraw Nigerian troops from Sierra Leone. In August 1999 he announced a schedule for their withdrawal, although this was suspended while a UN peacekeeping force was assembled, to which Nigeria provided 4000 troops. This force withdrew in 2005. Amid turmoil in Liberia, Obasanjo ordered Nigerian troops into the country in August 2003; they passed into a UN command two months later. Obasanjo granted Liberia's ousted leader Charles Taylor refuge in Nigeria, although subsequently returned him to Liberia to face trial for war crimes at the request of new Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. Eager to keep Nigeria out of domestically unpopular conflicts, he refused requests for the Nigerian military to participate in an ECOMOG intervention in the Guinea-Bissau civil war and the 2002 peacekeeping mission to the Côte d'Ivoire. At the UK's request, he assisted in a mediation with Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe government over the latter's encouragement of the violent seizure of white-owned farms. Along with South African President Thabo Mbeki and Australian Prime Minister John Howard, he was part of a team tasked with dealing with Zimbabwe by the Commonwealth. Obasanjo and Mbeki visited Zimbabwe three times to work on quiet diplomacy, unsuccessfully urging Mugabe to either retire or form a power sharing government with the opposition Movement for Democratic Change.


title: Olusegun Obasanjo

text: Shortly after Obasanjo's election, the place of Islamic sharia law became a major debate in Nigerian politics. Since the country's independence, sharia had been restricted to civil cases between Muslims in the northern states; criminal cases were not governed by sharia law, something that offended some Muslims. In September 1999, the Governor of Zamfara State, Ahmed Sani, announced the full introduction of sharia as the basis of that state's penal code, although specified that it would only apply to Muslim residents and not the non-Islamic minority. This sparked alarm among Christian minorities across northern Nigeria, with protests and counter-protests generating violence, especially in Kaduna. Across Nigeria, Christian opinion was very hostile to the introduction of sharia as the basis of state penal systems. Both houses of the National Assembly urged Obasanjo to take the issue to the Supreme Court. He was eager to avoid this, not wanting the role of sharia to become a constitutional issue. Publicly he sought to distinguish what he called "genuine sharia" from "political sharia," praising the former while insisting that the latter was a fad that would fizzle out. By refusing to intervene, Obasanjo drew criticism for a lack of courage from many southerners, while Muslim hardliners in the north mocked him. Amid popular demand from Muslim communities, four more northern states adopted sharia penal law in 2000 and seven more in 2001. Obasanjo later stated that the issue was the biggest challenge he ever faced as president.


title: Olusegun Obasanjo

text: When Obasanjo came to power, he was appalled that Nigeria was experiencing widespread unrest and violence, resulting in thousands of deaths. This violence was being exacerbated by a rapidly growing population which brought with it spiralling urbanisation and competition for scarce land in rural areas. To deal with this, Obasanjo doubled the country's police force from 120,000 to 240,000 between 1999 and 2003. Little was done to deal with police brutality, with the torture of suspects remaining widespread under Obasanjo's administration. Also fuelling the violence were ethnic tensions, with different ethnic and regional groups calling for greater autonomy, leading various commentators to predict the breakup of Nigeria. For Obasanjo, keeping the country united became a major priority. Only on select occasions would he turn to the military to quell unrest, preferring not to have to mobilise the army unless state governors requested it. In his words, "we must utilise military force only when all else has failed. That is my own principle and philosophy." He saw greater value in forgiveness, amnesty, and reconciliation to achieve harmony than in retributive criminal justice of perpetrators. Under Obasanjo's presidency, the levels of violence and disorder in Nigeria declined.A major hub of secessionist sentiment was in the Niger Delta region, where indigenous groups wanted to retain a far greater proportion of the proceeds from the area's lucrative oil reserves. In July 1999, Obasanjo sent the National Assembly a bill to create a Niger Delta Development Commission to formulate and implement a plan for dealing with the region, something he hoped would quell violence there. Amid much debate, the commission was finally launched in December 2000. In November 1999 he also sent two army battalions into the Niger Delta region to apprehend the Asawana Boys, an Ijaw group who had captured and killed police officers in Odi, Bayelsa State. The military destroyed most of the town; the government claimed that 43 had been killed, but a local NGO put the number of civilian deaths at 2,483. Obasanjo described the destruction as "avoidable" and "regrettable" and visited Odi in March 2001; he refused to condemn the army, apologise for the destruction, pay compensation or rebuild the town, although the Niger Delta Development Commission did the latter.


title: Olusegun Obasanjo

text: In 2000, Obasanjo banned the Oodua Peoples Congress (OPC), a Yoruba nationalist group involved in violence against other ethnicities, and ordered the arrest of its leaders. In September 2001, violence between indigenous Christians and northern Muslim traders in Plateau State resulted in around 500 deaths before the army moved in and regained control. Obasanjo then visited and urged reconciliation. In October 2001, Muslim demonstrators in Kano killed around 200 Igbo in response to Nigeria's support for the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan. Obasanjo then visited to urge reconciliation but was booed by residents. Also in October, soldiers had been sent to calm tensions between the Jukun and Tiv communities along the borders between Benue and Taraba states; a Tiv militia then captured and killed them in Zaki-Biam. Obasanjo ordered the army in, where they rounded up and killed as many as 250 to 300 local men. Obasanjo visited the area in 2002 and apologised for the excessive use of force.


title: Olusegun Obasanjo

text: In January 2002, Obasanjo ordered the mobile police to break-up the Bakossi Boys, a vigilante group active primarily in Abia and Anambra states which was responsible for an estimated two thousand killings. He had hesitated doing so before due to the popular support that the group had accrued through fighting criminal gangs, but felt able to move against them after their popularity waned. That same month, an ammunition dump at the Ijeka barracks near Lagos exploded, potentially resulting in as many as a thousand deaths. Obasanjo visited immediately. Violent unrest had also continued in Lagos, and in February 2002, troops were sent into the city to restore stability. In April 2002, Obasanjo proposed legislation that would allow for the proscription of ethnic-based groups if they were deemed to promote violence, but the National Executive rejected this as an overreach of presidential power.


title: Olusegun Obasanjo

text: Some public officials like the Speaker of the House of Representatives and President of the Senate were involved in conflicts with the President, who battled many impeachment attempts from both houses. Obasanjo managed to survive impeachment and was renominated.


title: Olusegun Obasanjo

text: He became chairman of the PDP Board of Trustees, with control over nominations for governmental positions and even policy and strategy. As one Western diplomat said, "He intends to sit in the passenger seat giving advice and ready to grab the wheel if Nigeria goes off course." He voluntarily resigned as the chairman board of trustees of the PDP in April 2012. Afterwards, he withdrew from political activities with PDP.


title: Olusegun Obasanjo

text: In March 2008, Obasanjo was "supposedly" indicted by a committee of the Nigerian parliament for awarding $2.2bn-worth of energy contracts during his eight-year rule, without due process. The report of this probe was never accepted by the whole Nigerian parliament due to manipulation of the entire process by the leadership of the power probe committee. It is not on any official record that Chief Obasanjo was indicted.


title: Olusegun Obasanjo

text: In May 2014, Obasanjo wrote to President Goodluck Jonathan requesting that he should mediate on behalf of the Nigerian government for the release of the Chibok girls held by the Boko Haram militants.


title: Olusegun Obasanjo

text: On 16 February 2015, he quit the ruling party and directed a PDP ward leader to tear his membership card during a press conference. He was later to be known as the navigator of the newly formed opposition party, the APC.


title: Olusegun Obasanjo

text: On 24 January 2018, he wrote serving President Muhammadu Buhari highlighting his areas of weakness and advising him not to run for office in 2019. To date all his letters to incumbent presidents have preceded their downfall.


title: Olusegun Obasanjo

text: On 31 January 2018, his political movement called "Coalition for Nigeria Movement" (CNM) was launched in Abuja. On 10 May 2018, the movement adopts a political party, African Democratic Congress (ADC), to realise its dream of a new Nigeria.


title: Olusegun Obasanjo

text: On 20 November 2018, he officially announced his return to the main opposition party, Peoples Democratic Party, PDP during a book launch “My Transition Hours,” written by former President Goodluck Jonathan.


title: Olusegun Obasanjo

text: On 22 January 2022, he declared that he has retired from partisan politics, he stated this after receiving National delegates of the People's Democratic Party [PDP] in his residence in Ota, Ogun State, Nigeria


title: Olusegun Obasanjo

text: Obasanjo was appointed Special Envoy by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon to the war-torn Democratic Republic of the Congo. He held separate meetings with DRC President Joseph Kabila and rebel leader Laurent Nkunda.


title: Olusegun Obasanjo

text: During the Zimbabwean election of July 2013, Obasanjo headed a delegation of African Union election observers.


title: Olusegun Obasanjo

text: In 2022, Obasanjo mediated peace talks between the Ethiopian government and the Tigray People's Liberation Front under the auspices of the African Union, culminating in a ceasefire of the Tigray War on November 2, 2022.


title: Olusegun Obasanjo

text: In December 2017, Obasanjo defended his Ph.D. thesis at the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN). He now holds a Ph.D. in theology. That was about two years after he completed his master's degree in the same course.


title: Olusegun Obasanjo

text: Ideologically, Obasanjo was a Nigerian nationalist. He was committed to a form of Nigerian patriotism and the belief that Nigeria should be retained as a single nation-state, rather than being broken up along ethnic lines. In 2001, he stated that his long-term goal was "the nullification of all forms of identification except Nigerian citizenship". He argued that dismantling Nigeria along ethnic lines would result in the ethnic cleansing and violence that had been seen during the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s. Ilife argued that Obasanjo's Nigerian nationalism was impacted both by his detachment from the Yoruba elite and by his time in the army, where he worked alongside soldiers from a broad range of ethnic backgrounds.


title: Olusegun Obasanjo

text: Iliffe noted that an emphasis on consensus politics was "a guiding principle" throughout Obasanjo's career. While in power during the 1970s, Obasanjo expressed criticism of "institutionalized opposition" to the government. In his view this was "profoundly incongruent with most African political culture and practice." Instead of constantly opposing the government, he believed that opposition parties should instead offer constructive criticism, and that politicians should pursue a search for consensus rather than engaging in constant competition. He thought that political competition had a destabilising effect that was particularly dangerous for a developing country such as Nigeria, and that stability should be preserved.


title: Olusegun Obasanjo

text: Frustrated with what he regarded as the failures of representative democratic rule during the early 1980s, Obasanjo began expressing support for a one-party state in Nigeria. He nevertheless insisted that this one-party state must facilitate general public participation in governance, respect human rights, and protect freedom of expression. Later in the 1980s he warned against the proposed two-party state which Babangida was putting forward, believing that while Babangida envisioned a centre-left and centre-right party competing against each other, it would inevitably develop into one party representing the Christian south and the other representing the Muslim north. He instead argued that there should be no limit on the number of political parties that could be formed, although suggested that if this could not occur then Nigeria should become a one-party state. Amid the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s and the subsequent move towards multi-party politics across Africa, Obasanjo again became supportive of multi-party systems.


title: Olusegun Obasanjo

text: Iliffe noted that as a politician, Obasanjo displayed an "open-minded pragmatism". A tactic employed by Obasanjo at various points was to deliberately polarise an issue so as to rally support for his perspective.


title: Olusegun Obasanjo

text: Iliffe thought that although Obasanjo had been too young to play a major role in the anti-colonialist struggle for Nigerian independence from British rule, he was "marked for ever" by the "optimism and dedication" of the independence movement.


title: Olusegun Obasanjo

text: In office, Obasanjo's task was to ensure that Nigeria functioned both politically and economically. Over the course of his political career, Obasanjo moved from the belief in the advantages of state involvement in heavy industry, which was common in the 1970s, to a commitment to market liberalism that had become dominant in the 1990s. Iliffe thought that throughout his career, Obasanjo had always displayed an "ambivalence" about the level of state involvement in the economy. His general attitude was that poverty was caused by idleness. While campaigning for the 1999 presidential election, Obasanjo called himself a "market-oriented social democrat" although was vague on his proposed economic strategy. During his presidency, his government brought together figures who were committed to free markets, who favoured more protectionist economic strategies, and those sympathetic to socialism. Obasanjo was contemptuous of ideological arguments about capitalism and socialism. The decisions he took were usually based on political considerations rather than on legal or constitutional principles, something which was a source of concern for some of his critics. Derfler thought that during his first term in office, Obasanjo was a "cautious reformer".


title: Olusegun Obasanjo

text: Obasanjo lived a polygamous lifestyle. Obasanjo married his first wife, Oluremi Akinlawon, in London in 1963; she gave birth to his first child, Iyabo, in 1967. Iyabo had a close relationship with her father. Oluremi was unhappy that Obasanjo maintained relationships with other women and alleged that he beat her. They divorced in the mid-1970s. That decade, Obasanjo began a common-law relationship with NTA reporter Gold Oruh who bore him two children. He married his second wife, Stella Abebe, in 1976, having met her on a visit to London. He married Stella in 1976, and she bore him three children. Obasanjo's other partners include businesswoman Lynda Soares who was murdered by car thieves in 1986. On 23 October 2005, the President lost his wife, Stella Obasanjo, First Lady of Nigeria the day after she had an abdominoplasty in Spain. In 2009, the doctor, known only as 'AM', was sentenced to one year in jail for negligence in Spain and ordered to pay restitution to her son of about $176,000. He was largely private about his relationships with these women. Some of his children were resentful that he gave them no special privileges and treated their mothers poorly. One of his sons, Adeboye Obasanjo is a brigadier general in the Nigerian army.


title: Olusegun Obasanjo

text: Ethnically, Obasanjo is Yoruba, a cultural identification he reflected in his speech and choice of clothing. However, he always foregrounded his Nigerian identity above his Yoruba one, repeatedly stating that "I am a Nigerian who happens to be a Yoruba man. I am not a Yoruba man who happens to be a Nigerian."


title: Olusegun Obasanjo

text: Throughout his life he expressed a preference for rural over urban life. He has been a lifelong teetotaller. He has been characterised as having a sense of discipline and duty, and emphasised what he saw as the importance of leadership. He was meticulous at planning, and Iliffe called him an "instinctively cautious man". Obasanjo always emphasised the importance of deferring to seniority, a value he had learned in childhood.


title: Olusegun Obasanjo

text: Iliffe described Obasanjo as a man with "great physical and intellectual energy" who "exercised power with skill and ruthlessness, sometimes unscrupulously but seldom cruelly". Derfler similarly stated that, although Obasanjo could appear "boorish and dull", he had a "sharply perceptive mind" and the capacity to be "tough and ruthless". He had, according to Iliffe, a "remarkable capacity for work". He was cautious with money, living modestly and seeking financial security by investing in property. He is softly-spoken.


title: Olusegun Obasanjo

text: In his sixties, Obasanjo would regularly work 18 to 20 hour days, getting very little sleep. He would start each day with prayers. Obasanjo suffers from diabetes and high blood-pressure. He enjoyed playing squash.


title: Olusegun Obasanjo

text: Obasanjo's writings after his imprisonment reflected his commitment to Biblical literalism. He called the Darwinian theory of evolution a "debasing, devaluing and dehumanising" idea. After his release from prison his writings placed far less emphasis on traditional culture as a guide to morality, calling on fellow Nigerians to reject much of their pre-Christian "way of life." Iliffe noted that Obasanjo's born-again Christianity was "strikingly orthodox" and was aligned with mainline Baptist teaching. He rejected the prosperity gospel that was taught by some Pentecostalists in Nigeria. Providentialism also became a key part of his worldview after his imprisonment.


title: Olusegun Obasanjo

text: In addition to a variety of other chieftaincy titles, Chief Obasanjo is the holder of the title of the Olori Omo Ilu of Ibogun-Olaogun. A number of other members of his family hold or have held chieftaincies as well.


title: Olusegun Obasanjo

text: John Iliffe described Obasanjo as "the outstanding member of the second generation of independent African leaders who dedicated themselves to the consolidation of their postcolonial states". He thought that there were four major achievements of Obasanjo's presidency: that he partially contained the domestic turmoil permeating Nigeria, that he kept control of the military, that he helped to form the African Union, and that he liquidated the country's external debt.


title: Olusegun Obasanjo

text: In December 1999, his approval rating was at 84%; by 2001 it was at 72%; and by September 2003 it had fallen to 39%.


title: Olusegun Obasanjo

text: Obasanjo was repeatedly accused of corruption throughout his career, although maintained that his dealings were honest.


title: Olusegun Obasanjo

text: Obasanjo's critics believed that after his imprisonment in the 1990s, he increasingly perceived himself as a messianic figure, having lost his humility and become increasingly committed to the belief that it was his God-commanded destiny to rule Nigeria. Obasanjo's critics believed that he had been corrupted by power and that, particularly during his second term in office, he became driven by the idea of indefinitely retaining power for himself.


title: Olusegun Obasanjo

text: During his first term as head of state he earned some enmity from fellow Yoruba who believed that he should have done more to advance the interests of his own ethnic group in government.


title: Olusegun Obasanjo

text: After his imprisonment, Obasanjo claimed that criticism only served to confirm "the rightness of my cause" and demonstrated his critics' "depravity in a fallen and perverted world."


title: Sprite (drink)

text: Sprite is an American-owned brand of clear, lemon and lime-flavored soft drink created by the Coca-Cola Company. Sprite comes in multiple flavors, including cranberry, cherry, grape, orange, tropical, ginger, and vanilla. Ice, peach, Berryclear remix, and newer versions of the drinks are artificially sweetened. Sprite was created to compete primarily against Keurig Dr Pepper's 7 Up.


title: Sprite (drink)

text: The Sprite brand name was created by T. C. "Bud" Evans, a Houston-based bottler who also distributed Coca-Cola products, circa 1955 for a line of drinks with flavors such as strawberry and orange; the rights to the name were acquired by the Coca-Cola Company in 1960.


title: Sprite (drink)

text: The lemon-lime drink known today as Sprite was developed in West Germany in 1959 as Fanta Klare Zitrone ("Fanta Clear Lemon" in English) and was introduced in the United States under the Sprite name in 1961 as a competitor to 7 Up.


title: Sprite (drink)

text: Sprite advertisements often make use of the portmanteau word “lymon"”", a combination of the words "lemon" and "lime". Additionally, the bottle of the beverage has several concave spots, an attempt to emulate the bubbles caused by the soda's carbonation.


title: Sprite (drink)

text: By the 1980s, Sprite had developed a large following among teenagers. In response, Sprite began to cater to this demographic in their advertisements in 1987. "I Like the Sprite In You" was the brand's first long-running slogan, and many jingles were produced around it before its discontinuation in 1994.


title: Sprite (drink)

text: In 1993, marketing agency Lowe and Partners created a new slogan, "Control your thirst" with commission from the Coca-Cola Company. The new, more vibrant logo stood out more on packaging and featured a blue-to-green gradient with silver "splashes" and subtle white "bubbles" in the background. The product name, "Sprite" had a logo with a blue backdrop shadow. The words; "Great Lymon Taste!" which had been present on the previous logo, were removed. This logo was used in the United States until 2006, and similar variants were used in other countries until this year as well.


title: Sprite (drink)

text: The brand's slogan was changed to "Obey Your Thirst", and jingles containing it became urban-oriented, featuring a hip-hop theme. One of the first lyrics for the new slogan was, "never forget yourself 'cause first things first, grab a cold, cold can, and obey your thirst.” Under the new slogan, Sprite tapped into hip-hop culture by leveraging up and coming, as well as underground rap artists including; LL Cool J, A Tribe Called Quest, KRS-One, Missy Elliott, Grand Puba, Common, Fat Joe, Nas and others in television commercials. Sprite expanded its urban connections in the late 1990s by featuring both amateur and accomplished basketball players in their advertisements. Famous NBA players and hip-hop artists such as LeBron James, Trae Young, Vince Staples, and Lil Yachty appeared in Sprite adverts.


title: Sprite (drink)

text: In 1998, one commercial poked fun at products that featured cartoon mascots in the style of a horror film. In it, the mascot for a fictitious orange juice drink called "Sun Fizz" comes to life, terrifying the kids and mother, and starts to chase them.


title: Sprite (drink)

text: In the 1990s, one of Sprite's longest-running ad campaigns was "Grant Hill Drinks Sprite" (overlapping its "Obey Your Thirst" campaign), in which the well-liked basketball player's abilities, and Sprite's importance in giving him his abilities, were humorously exaggerated.


title: Sprite (drink)

text: In 2000, Sprite commissioned graffiti artist Temper to design limited edition art, which appeared on 100 million cans across Europe.


title: Sprite (drink)

text: In 2004, Coke created Miles Thirst, a vinyl doll voiced by Reno Wilson, used in advertising to exploit the hip-hop market for soft drinks.


title: Sprite (drink)

text: In 2006, a new Sprite logo, consisting of two yellow and green "halves" forming an "S" lemon/lime design, made its debut on Sprite bottles and cans. The slogan was changed from its long-running "Obey Your Thirst" to just "Obey" in the United States and was outright replaced with "Freedom From Thirst" in many countries. This was the decade's first major shift in advertising themes.


title: Sprite (drink)

text: The "Sublymonal" campaign was also used as part of the alternate reality game the "Lost Experience". This also resurrected the "lymon" word.


title: Sprite (drink)

text: In France in 2012, the drink was reformulated removing 30% of the sugar and replacing it with the artificial sweetener Stevia, leading to the drink containing fewer calories. This soon spread to Ireland, the UK and the Netherlands in 2013.


title: Sprite (drink)

text: A further formula change happened in the UK in 2018. This formula replaced Stevia with Aspartame and Acesulfame K and has less sugar than before. In Ireland in the same year, Sprite was relaunched with Sprite Zero being renamed Sprite. Sprite with sugar is no longer being sold. In addition, a version of the sugar-free drink with cucumber taste was added to the range. A number of countries around the world have began transitioning to this new recipe.


title: Sprite (drink)

text: In Australia, Sprite launched with a new recipe containing 40% less sugar (compared with old Sprite) in August 2019. This formula does not use Aspartame but replaces some of the sugar with Acesulfame K and Sucralose. In 2022, Australia released a Lemon flavoured variants Sprite Lemon+ and Sprite Lemon+ Zero Sugar.


title: Sprite (drink)

text: In July 2022, the Coca-Cola Company announced that Sprite will discontinue its green bottles on August 1 and switch to clear plastic bottles. The green plastic contains green polyethylene terephthalate (PET), an additive that cannot be recycled into new bottles.


title: It's All Coming Back to Me Now

text: "It's All Coming Back to Me Now" is a power ballad written by Jim Steinman. According to Steinman, the song was inspired by "Wuthering Heights", and was an attempt to write "the most passionate, romantic song" he could ever create. "The Sunday Times" posits that "Steinman protects his songs as if they were his children". Meat Loaf had wanted to record the song for years, but Steinman saw it as a "woman's song". Steinman won a court movement preventing Meat Loaf from recording it. Girl group Pandora's Box went on to record it, and it was subsequently made famous through a cover by Celine Dion, which upset Meat Loaf because he was going to use it for a planned album with the working title "Bat Out of Hell III". Alternately, Meat Loaf has said the song was intended for "" and given to the singer in 1986, but that they both decided to use "I'd Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That)" for "Bat II", and save this song for "".


title: It's All Coming Back to Me Now

text: The song has had three major releases. The first version appeared on the concept album "Original Sin", recorded by Pandora's Box. It was then recorded by Celine Dion for her album "Falling into You", and her version was a commercial hit, reaching No. 2 in the U.S. "Billboard" Hot 100 (behind Los del Río's "Macarena" and Blackstreet's "No Diggity") and No. 3 in the UK Singles Chart. Meat Loaf eventually recorded it as a duet with Norwegian singer Marion Raven for "Bat III" and released it as a single in 2006. This version reached No. 1 in Norway and No. 2 in Scotland.


title: It's All Coming Back to Me Now

text: A music video was produced for each of the three versions; death is a recurring theme in all of these videos, fitting in with the suggestion in Virgin Records' press release for "Original Sin" that "in Steinman's songs, the dead come to life and the living are doomed to die".


title: It's All Coming Back to Me Now

text: Influenced by Emily Brontë's novel "Wuthering Heights", Steinman compared the song to 'Heathcliff digging up Cathy's corpse and dancing with it in the cold moonlight', a scene which does not exist in the novel. In this conceptualization, which Steinman imagines having been censored from the book, the strength of Heathcliff's obsession enables a dance with a corpse on the beach despite the West Yorkshire moors being landlocked (and therefore more than the laws of nature would allow):


title: It's All Coming Back to Me Now

text: This isn't the "Wuthering Heights" of Kate Bush—that little fanciful "Wuthering Heights". The scene they always cut out is the scene when Heathcliff digs up Catherine's body and dances in the moonlight and on the beach with it. I think you can't get much more operatic or passionate than that. I was trying to write a song about dead things coming to life. I was trying to write a song about being enslaved and obsessed by love, not just enchanted and happy with it. It was about the dark side of love; about the ability to be resurrected by it... I just tried to put everything I could into it, and I'm real proud of it.


title: It's All Coming Back to Me Now

text: In another interview, Steinman expands on his comments about the song being about the 'dark side of love'.


title: It's All Coming Back to Me Now

text: It's about obsession, and that can be scary because you're not in control and you don't know where it's going to stop. It says that, at any point in somebody's life, when they loved somebody strongly enough and that person returns, a certain touch, a certain physical gesture can turn them from being defiant and disgusted with this person to being subservient again. And it's not just a pleasurable feeling that comes back, it's the complete terror and loss of control that comes back. And I think that's ultimately a great weapon.


title: It's All Coming Back to Me Now

text: The website AllMusic called the song 'a tormented ballad about romantic loss and regret built on a spooky yet heart-wrenching piano melody'. The torment is present in the song's opening ('There were nights when the wind was so cold'), from which the singer recovers ('I finished crying in the instant that you left... And I banished every memory you and I had ever made'). However, the defiance in the verses are replaced by the return of the 'subservient' feelings in the chorus ('when you touch me like this, and you hold me like that...'); this juxtaposition continues throughout the song.


title: It's All Coming Back to Me Now

text: Eroticism is implied in the lines 'There were nights of endless pleasure' and 'The flesh and the fantasies: all coming back to me'. The song ends with a passionate, quiet reprise of the chorus. Critics have also identified Wagner, of whom Steinman was an admirer, as an inspiration. Specifying this song, "The Sunday Times" said "the theme of Wagner's opera "Tristan and Isolde", with its extreme passions and obsessive love, informs all his best work".


title: It's All Coming Back to Me Now

text: A 2007 article in the "Toronto Star" claims that the song was written as Steinman's "tryout" as lyricist for Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Sunset Boulevard".


title: It's All Coming Back to Me Now

text: In 1989, Steinman produced a concept album, "Original Sin", with an all-female group called Pandora's Box. The album featured many tracks that would later be recorded by other artists, particularly Meat Loaf. Elaine Caswell was the lead vocalist for "It's All Coming Back to Me Now", who apparently collapsed five times during its recording. Caswell has since performed the song as part of The Dream Engine at Joe's Pub in New York City.


title: It's All Coming Back to Me Now

text: For the track, Roy Bittan performed on the grand piano, with Steinman and Jeff Bova on keyboards. Guitars were by Eddie Martinez, with Steve Buslowe on bass guitar and Jimmy Bralower on drums. Todd Rundgren arranged the background vocals, which were performed by Ellen Foley, Gina Taylor, and Deliria Wilde. The song was released as a single in the United Kingdom on 2 October 1989 and reached No. 51 in the UK Singles Chart. In its review of the album, "Kerrang!" magazine called the song 'excruciatingly operatic'.


title: It's All Coming Back to Me Now

text: Ken Russell directed the video, which was filmed at Pinewood Studios in Buckinghamshire. Steinman wrote the script, based on Russell's "Nessun Dorma" segment in the compilation opera movie "Aria". Scholar Joseph Lanza describes the video:


title: It's All Coming Back to Me Now

text: a woman's near-death experience [from a motorcycle crash] is set amid operatic excesses and black leather. In a simulated city engulfed by an apocalyptic blaze, British vocalist Elaine Caswell sings and participates in a ritual to celebrate the song's "nights of sacred pleasure"... [The soundstage] is stocked with gravestones, motorcycles, python and dancers (allegedly from the London production of "Cats"), strapped in chaps, studded bras, and spiked codpieces.


title: It's All Coming Back to Me Now

text: The girl, near death, is being ministered to by paramedics, fantasizing and being 'sexually aroused by a large python and writhing on a bed that lit up in time with the music, while surrounded by a group of bemused, semi-naked dancers'. When Steinman's manager saw it, he responded 'It's a porno movie!' The two-day shoot ran over schedule and budget, costing £35,000 an hour. Russell and Steinman even designed a sequence where a motorcyclist would cycle up the steps of a local church-tower, jump out of the turrets at the top, and then explode; alas, the wardens of the church refused permission.


title: It's All Coming Back to Me Now

text: The 7-inch, 12-inch, and CD singles featured Steven Margoshes's piano solo "Pray Lewd" (containing elements of "It's All Coming Back to Me Now"), Steinman's monologue "I've Been Dreaming Up a Storm Lately", and "Requiem Metal", a sample from Verdi's "Requiem Mass", all from the album "Original Sin".


title: It's All Coming Back to Me Now

text: "It's All Coming Back to Me Now" is the first track on Canadian singer Celine Dion's fourth English-language studio album, "Falling into You" (1996). Jim Steinman produced the track, with Steven Rinkoff and Roy Bittan credited as co-producers. "Bat Out of Hell" and Meat Loaf collaborators Todd Rundgren, Eric Troyer, Rory Dodd, Glen Burtnick and Kasim Sulton provided backing vocals. This version utilized a modified version of the original Pandora's Box track with Caswell's vocals and certain instrumental passages removed. It peaked at number two on Billboard Hot 100 for five weeks, becoming the thirty-fourth biggest number two Hot 100 hit of all time. The full-length version of the song is the version that appears on "Falling into You" and is seven minutes and thirty-seven seconds long. A radio edit of the song was made, which appears on all editions of Dion's first English-language greatest hits album, "All the Way... A Decade of Song" (1999), and lasts for five minutes and thirty-one seconds.


title: It's All Coming Back to Me Now

text: According to "The Sunday Times", Andrew Lloyd Webber told Steinman he thought this song was "the greatest love song ever written," and on hearing Dion's version reportedly said: "This will be the record of the millennium". In an interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Elaine Caswell said that she expressed shock upon hearing Dion's version, often leaving a scene when the song came out in places such as laundromats in tears. Caswell later met Dion when she joined her to record a cover of "River Deep – Mountain High". The singer revealed that she had listened to Caswell's vocals in the original version and hoped she could match her voice.


title: It's All Coming Back to Me Now

text: The song was also included in Dion's 2008 greatest hits compilation "". Live performances can be found on the "A New Day... Live in Las Vegas" and "" albums. Dion performed this song during her tour 1996/1997, Let's Talk About Love World Tour 1998/1999, Taking Chances World Tour 2008/2009, two Las Vegas residencies, A new Day... and Celine, Tournée Européenne 2013, Summer Tour 2016, 2017 European tour and her 2018 tour. She performed the song during her British Summer Time concert in London's Hyde Park on 5 July 2019, and also opened her 2019-2020 Courage World Tour show with the song.


title: It's All Coming Back to Me Now

text: Dion's version received widespread critical acclaim. AllMusic senior editor Stephen Thomas Erlewine marked it as a standout along with "Falling into You", and praised it, "Celine shines on mock epics like Jim Steinman's 'It's All Coming Back to Me Now.'" Larry Flick from "Billboard" asked, "Is there a pop diva hotter than Dion right now?" He added, "Lesser talents might have been gobbled up by his melodramatic arrangements, but Dion rises to the occasion with a performance that soars above the instrumentation with deliciously theatrical flair." A reviewer from the "Calgary Sun" stated, "[The song] is undoubtedly the highlight of her English-language recording career. Celine's over-the-top vocals soar and swoop around Steinman's epic, ostentatious arrangement. Not surprisingly, everything else that follows... pales in comparison". Pip Ellwood-Hughes from Entertainment Focus called it "one of the finest songs the singer has ever recorded. It shows the power of her voice as well as the subtle emotion she can display in the quieter moments. The song is nothing short of a rock opera and Dion is the perfect person to sing it." Toronto's "Eye Weekly" said Steinman's "fatal absence from the last Meat Loaf record is finally justified here." Dave Sholin from the "Gavin Report" felt that Steinman's "dramatic writing style melds perfectly with her powerful vocal, giving this production an incredibly passionate quality". "The Miami Herald" said Dion "knocks a couple out of the ballpark... [the song] features seven minutes of Wagnerian bombast, thunderclap piano chords and emoting that would wither an opera diva. Sure, it's over-the-top but it's passionate and musical".


title: It's All Coming Back to Me Now

text: British magazine "Music Week" rated it four out of five, picking it as Single of the Week. The reviewer added, "You don't need to be a musical genius to spot this melodramatic builder as a Jim Steinman number and, while the overblown style isn't to everyone's taste, this should be huge." Stephen Holden from "The New York Times" wrote, "The melodrama peaks with two overblown Jim Steinman productions: 'It's All Coming Back to Me Now', a romantic flashback replete with thunderclaps... " "People" magazine stated that literally, it "blasts off the CD with a booming piano chord followed by seven minutes of Wagnerian melodrama, Dion's crystalline soprano swelling and trembling with operatic abandon worthy of the Ring cycle's immolation scene." "Richmond Times-Dispatch" picked it as one of the best tracks on the "Falling into You" album. "Sun-Sentinel" noted it as "lyrically and musically beautiful" and said that "this nearly eight-minute ballad sets the pace for this album with Dion's emotional singing." Christopher Smith from TalkAboutPopMusic called it "the biggest spectacle" of the album, and "a complete album in itself".


title: It's All Coming Back to Me Now

text: Some other reviews were less enthusiastic. After labelling Celine "a Madonna-meets-Meat Loaf vocal freak", "The Vancouver Sun" described the song as "intensely self-indulgent, pompously self-important and mediocre beyond belief, the song just never ends". "The Ottawa Sun" called it 'turgid', while "The Toronto Sun", coincidentally, said that it "sounds like a Meat Loaf reject".


title: It's All Coming Back to Me Now

text: British director Nigel Dick directed the music video for Dion's version, with Simon Archer as cinematographer and Jaromir Svarc as art director. It was shot between 29 June and 3 July 1996 in the Ploskovice summer palace of the Austrian Emperors and Barandov Studios, Prague, Czech Republic; it was later released in July 1996. Castle Ploskovice in Ploskovice supplied the exterior of the gothic mansion. There are two versions of this music video; the full version (about 7:44 in length) and the single version (about 6:00 in length). Both of them are included on Dion's 2001 DVD video collection "All the Way... A Decade of Song & Video".


title: It's All Coming Back to Me Now

text: The video opens with a man being thrown off his motorcycle, after lightning strikes a tree down in his path - eventually killing him in the process. Dion's character is haunted by her lover's image, which she sees through a mirror, and images of them together through picture frames. There are stylistic similarities to Russell Mulcahy's video for Steinman's "Total Eclipse of the Heart", to the extent that "Slant Magazine" calls Dick's video an update. On 10 January 2020, the music video reached 100 million views on YouTube.


title: It's All Coming Back to Me Now

text: Smooth Radio listed "It's All Coming Back to Me Now" at number 19 on their list of the "Greatest Power Ballads of All Time". Pitchfork listed the song as one of "The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s", saying, "Dion, the most successful balladeer of the ’90s, summons all the power in her soul and lungs to commune with the dead, the theatrically proggy arrangement crescendoing behind her."


title: It's All Coming Back to Me Now

text: In interviews, Meat Loaf has said that, in his mind, the song was always meant to be a duet. It was recorded as a duet by Meat Loaf and Marion Raven for the album "", produced by Desmond Child. Raven had been working on her solo album with Child, and was chosen because the timbre of her voice starkly contrasts to Meat Loaf's. In promotional interviews, Meat Loaf said that "I believe that the version that Marion Raven and myself did on this album is the definitive version".


title: It's All Coming Back to Me Now

text: Meat Loaf said that he was in tears when he first heard the song, which he stated is "the only time that's happened". He has also said that the song could refer to Steinman and himself, with an array of emotions coming back every time they work together. Referring to lines like 'when I kiss you like that', he said that although "I love Jim Steinman", he wouldn't French kiss him.


title: It's All Coming Back to Me Now

text: To me it wasn't a song about romance, it was about me and Jim Steinman. We'd had a load of problems with managers in the early '80s and all of a sudden after five years we started to communicate. After I'd been to his house, he sent me the song, and it was "It's All Coming Back To Me Now". Not the line 'When you kiss me like that', but the emotional connection. It doesn't have to be literal.


title: It's All Coming Back to Me Now

text: P. R. Brown directed this video, which premiered on VH1 Classic on 8 August 2006. There are similarities between the video for Meat Loaf's version of the song, and that the video for that of Celine Dion, with Meat Loaf being haunted by the memory of his lover. It is structured differently, however, with the story being told through flashback. Shots when Raven's character is alive have a distinct yellow tint, with a darker, blue tint for those after her death. Whereas the motorcyclist dies before the first verse in the Dion version, Raven's crash and resulting death is not shown until the final chorus. Meat Loaf becomes angry with Raven because the ghost of Raven's former lover appears at a masquerade ball they are attending (some reviewers have compared this to the Stanley Kubrick film "Eyes Wide Shut").


title: It's All Coming Back to Me Now

text: This version of the song replaces the word 'nights' with 'lights', in the line 'There were nights of endless pleasure'. The ending of the single version is different, concluding with an additional 'We forgive and forget and it's all coming back to me now'. The album version, following those recorded by Pandora's Box and Celine Dion, ends with Raven whispering 'And if we...', followed by four piano notes.


title: It's All Coming Back to Me Now

text: The track was available to download from iTunes in the United Kingdom in August 2006, two months before its UK release on 16 October. The CD single includes the song "Black Betty", with the limited-edition 7-inch vinyl featuring "Whore", a rock duet with Patti Russo; it was also released as a DVD single. The album version was made available on Meat Loaf and Marion Raven's respective MySpace sites in August, with the single version being played during some of their promotional interviews, such as that on BBC Radio 2. The cover art is by Julie Bell, who is also the artist for the album "Bat out Of Hell III".


title: It's All Coming Back to Me Now

text: The single entered the UK Singles Chart at No. 6 on 22 October 2006, giving Meat Loaf his highest position in the UK chart since "I'd Lie for You (And That's the Truth)" reached No. 2 in 1995, and was the last UK Top 40 hit in his lifetime. The song also reached No. 1 in Raven's native Norway, as well as No. 7 in Germany. Critical reaction was generally positive, with "The Guardian" saying that the song is "ostensibly a reflection on love, but imbued with the delicacy of aircraft carriers colliding at sea".


title: It's All Coming Back to Me Now

text: Marion Raven joined Meat Loaf for his 2007 tour of Europe. She was the supporting act, promoting her album "Set Me Free". Meat Loaf introduced her again on stage at the latter stages of the concerts to duet on "It's All Coming Back to Me Now". A performance was recorded and released on DVD as "3 Bats Live".


title: Challenger 3

text: Challenger 3 (CR3) is a planned third generation British main battle tank in development for the British Army. It will be produced by conversion of existing Challenger 2 tanks by the British/German Rheinmetall BAE Systems Land joint venture.


title: Challenger 3

text: Improvements to Challenger 2 began in 2005 as the Capability And Sustainment Programme (CSP) to keep the Challenger 2 competitive until the 2030s. Lack of funding meant that it wasn't until 2014 that the programme was formally reorganised into the "Challenger 2 Life Extension Programme" (LEP). In response to the LEP programme, two prototypes were submitted for evaluation; one from BAE Systems in 2018 and the other from Rheinmetall in 2019. Later that year BAE and Rheinmetall merged their British operations into Rheinmetall BAE Systems Land (RBSL), effectively leaving Rheinmetall's proposal the only option available without replacing the Challenger 2 fleet with non-indigenous models.


title: Challenger 3

text: The Challenger 3 has an all-new turret with an improved hull. The most significant change from Challenger 2 to Challenger 3 is the replacement of the Challenger's main armament from a 120 mm L30A1 Rifled main gun to the 120 mm L55A1 smoothbore gun (which itself is an upgraded version of the L55 fitted to the Leopard 2A6/A7 family of main battle tanks) giving commonality with other NATO members. It is the first British built tank that doesn't have a rifled main gun from its inception.


title: Challenger 3

text: The Challenger 3 will be the fourth tank of this name, the first being the World War II Cruiser Mk VIII Challenger, which was developed from the Cromwell tank chassis and armed with a Ordnance QF 17-pounder. The second was the Gulf War-era Challenger 1, which was the British army's main battle tank (MBT) from the early 1980s to the mid-1990s when it was succeeded by the Challenger 2 which saw action following the Iraq War in 2003.


title: Challenger 3

text: In 2005, the MOD recognised a need for a Capability Sustainment Programme (CSP) to extend the service life of the Challenger 2 into the mid-2030s and upgrade its mobility, lethality and survivability. The CSP was planned to be complete by 2020 and was to combine all the upgrades from CLIP, including the fitting of a 120 mm smoothbore gun. By 2014, the CSP programme had been replaced by the Life Extension Programme (LEP) which shared a similar scope of replacing obsolete components and extending the tank's service life from 2025 to 2035, however the 120 mm smoothbore gun had seemingly been abandoned.


title: Challenger 3

text: In 2015, the British Army provided an insight into the scope of the LEP, dividing it into four key areas, namely:


title: Challenger 3

text: The MOD also began assessing active protection systems (APS) on the Challenger 2, including MUSS and Rheinmetall's ROSY Rapid Obscurant System.


title: Challenger 3

text: In August 2016, the MOD awarded assessment phase contracts to several companies for the Life Extension Programme. These included Team Challenger 2 (a consortium led by BAE Systems and including General Dynamics UK), CMI Defence and Ricardo plc, Rheinmetall and Lockheed Martin UK. In November, the MOD shortlisted two teams led by BAE Systems and Rheinmetall to compete for the LEP which was then estimated to be worth £650 million ($802 million).


title: Challenger 3

text: In October 2018, BAE Systems unveiled its proposed Challenger 2 LEP technology demonstrator, the "Black Night". The new improvements included a Safran PASEO commander’s sight, Leonardo thermal imager for the gunner and Leonardo DNVS 4 night sight. The turret also received modifications to improve the speed of traverse and to provide greater space as well as regenerative braking to generate and store power. Other enhancements included a laser warning system and an active protection system.


title: Challenger 3

text: In January 2019, Rheinmetall unveiled its proposal which included the development of a completely new turret with fully digital electronic architecture, day and night sights for the commander and gunner, and a Rheinmetall L55 120mm smoothbore gun. Whilst a more substantial upgrade than Black Night, the turret was developed on Rheinmetall's initiative and was not funded by the UK MOD, nor was it part of the MOD's LEP requirements.


title: Challenger 3

text: In June 2019, BAE Systems and Rheinmetall formed a joint venture company, based in the UK, named Rheinmetall BAE Systems Land (RBSL). Despite the merger, the company was still expected to present two separate proposals for the LEP contract. At DSEI 2019, RBSL first showed the 120mm proposal.


title: Challenger 3

text: In July 2020, Rheinmetall Defence showed a testbed vehicle on the Challenger 2 chassis, with a brand new turret, autoloading system and a powerful 130 mm smoothbore gun, the Rheinmetall Rh-130 L/51. The 130 mm L/51 is 500 kilograms heavier than existing 120 mm L/44 or L/55 cannons and would require a larger turret to work on the Challenger 3.


title: Challenger 3

text: In October 2020, the MOD argued against buying a new main battle tank from overseas instead of pursuing the Challenger 2 LEP, stating that an upgraded Challenger 2 would "be comparable—and in certain areas superior—to Leopard 2 or M1 Abrams".


title: Challenger 3

text: On 22 March 2021, the MOD published the command paper, "Defence in a Competitive Age", which confirmed the British Army's plans to upgrade 148 Challenger 2 tanks and designate them Challenger 3. The MOD confirmed the contract with RBSL had been signed, valued at £800 million (USD$1 billion), on 7 May 2021. Rheinmetall's more extensive upgrade proposal, including the new 120 mm smoothbore gun, had been accepted. The initial operating capability for the upgraded tanks is expected by 2027, with full operation capability expected to be declared by 2030.


title: Y: The Last Man (TV series)

text: Y: The Last Man is an American post-apocalyptic drama television series developed by Eliza Clark based on the by Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra. In the series, a mysterious cataclysmic event simultaneously kills every mammal with a Y chromosome—except for Yorick Brown–and follows him as he traverses the new world.


title: Y: The Last Man (TV series)

text: The series began development at FX in October 2015, with a pilot ordered and filmed in 2018. A first season was greenlit in 2019 with Clark replacing original showrunners Michael Green and Aida Mashaka Croal. Filming began in 2020, with several casting changes, including the lead role of Yorick. It premiered on September 13, 2021, on FX on Hulu, and stars Diane Lane, Ashley Romans, Ben Schnetzer, Olivia Thirlby, and Amber Tamblyn. It received generally positive reviews from critics, but was cancelled in October 2021, after one season.


title: Y: The Last Man (TV series)

text: "Y: The Last Man" takes place in a post-apocalyptic world where a mysterious cataclysmic event simultaneously killed every mammal with a Y chromosome but for one man – Yorick Brown (Ben Schnetzer) – and his male pet monkey Ampersand. The series follows Yorick as he traverses the new world, as its survivors struggle with their losses and attempt to restore world society—led by Yorick's mother, who is the new U.S. President, Jennifer Brown (Diane Lane).


title: Y: The Last Man (TV series)

text: In the original comic book series, every animal with a Y chromosome instantaneously dies at the same time, including most mammals. (Birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish, and invertebrates are unaffected because they mostly use different sex chromosomes.) While transgender people did not feature heavily in the original comic, it was mentioned that trans men survived due to not having Y chromosomes.


title: Y: The Last Man (TV series)

text: The producers aimed to update and expand on the ramifications of this, to reflect changing societal attitudes toward gender in the almost two decades since the comic began. The showrunners specified that trans women with Y chromosomes also died, as well as women with androgen insensitivity who were unaware they possessed Y chromosomes. The showrunners also added a trans male character to the regular cast (Sam Jordan, played by Elliot Fletcher), who does not have a direct counterpart in the original comic, to expand on this world-building.


title: Y: The Last Man (TV series)

text: Speaking at the August 2021 TCA panel, showrunner Eliza Clark said: "Yorick's maleness is not what sets him apart in this world — it's his Y chromosome that sets him apart. Gender is diverse and chromosomes are not equal to gender. And so, in our world — in the world of the television show — every living mammal with a Y chromosome dies. Tragically, that includes many women; it includes non-binary people; it includes intersex people ... We are making a show that affirms that trans women are women, trans men are men, non-binary people are non-binary, and that is part of the richness of the world we get to play with."


title: Y: The Last Man (TV series)

text: Cast member Fletcher said that "In this world post the event, gender is somewhat irrelevant. I think one of the hilarious things about this show is that post the event, Yorick can walk around without a mask on because he's assumed to be trans, rather than pre-the-event, people are assumed to be cisgender. And so, I just think it flips the traditional idea of gender completely on its head, and so I was very comfortable joining a project that knew that ahead of time and committed to it fully."


title: Y: The Last Man (TV series)

text: Showrunner Eliza Clark explained that the writing team tried to analyze the logical ripple effects of what would happen if all people with Y chromosomes died instantaneously. She said she was surprised at how even by 2020, there is still a large gender disparity in many aspects of essential infrastructure, ranging from the electrical power grid to something as basic as trucking to keep supply lines functional: "Basically what I learned is that our entire economy runs on trucks. So, if you're living in a city, you know when you go to a grocery store that grocery store needs two deliveries a day to be stocked for the number of people who are shopping [at] it, and they don't have storage. I think 5% of truck drivers are women."


title: Y: The Last Man (TV series)

text: Clark went on to say, that while all people with Y chromosomes are suddenly killed off, essentially removing the gender binary divide among the survivors, the resulting society that develops over the course of the series is not egalitarian. Other social divisions remain based on race, sexual orientation, politics, or wealth.


title: Y: The Last Man (TV series)

text: In the United States, Republican president Ted Campbell dies along with his vice president, most of both houses of Congress, and six out of nine Supreme Court Justices (including men as well as women who died in accidents resulting from the event). The presidential line of succession is decimated, losing the Speaker of the House, President "pro tempore" of the Senate, and (seemingly) all Cabinet officials. The surviving congresswomen hastily elevate the Chair of the House Intelligence Committee (Jennifer Brown, a Democrat) as Speaker, and in turn (within one hour) swear the new Speaker in as President.


title: Y: The Last Man (TV series)

text: President Campbell's politically active daughter Kimberly Campbell Cunningham begins rallying the surviving Republican congresswomen, urging that they were the lawfully elected party in power before the die-off, while Brown's new Executive branch wasn't elected but came into power through line of succession. There was also a higher ratio of female Democratic members than Republicans, at least temporarily tipping the balance in the surviving government as well.


title: Y: The Last Man (TV series)

text: Only two women were Cabinet heads – but Secretary of Education Abbott was born in Antigua and thus not eligible. The only eligible Cabinet head was Regina Oliver, who was visiting Israel at the time of the event and presumed dead. Later, however, it is discovered that Oliver survived: she was injured in a building collapse and left in a coma for several weeks, but recovers. Oliver is described even by moderate Republicans as a far-right radical who President Campbell only appointed to a minor Cabinet position as a concession to far-right swing voters. Even Kimberly Campbell's surviving Republican caucus considers Oliver a fringe lunatic, leaving them conflicted about pushing for her to replace Brown as president.


title: Y: The Last Man (TV series)

text: The effect of the die-off on other countries isn't discussed in detail in the first season, in part because the world has been thrown into such chaos that even Jennifer Brown's fragile emergency administration still doesn't know. Other countries with few or no women in leadership positions fared much worse than the United States, which was itself crippled. In the third episode, it is briefly mentioned that the Russian government tried to spread propaganda that their male leadership had survived in isolation, but when rioters stormed the Kremlin and exposed this to be a lie, the Russian government collapsed.


title: Y: The Last Man (TV series)

text: In October 2015, it was reported that FX had begun development on a television series adaptation of Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra's comic book series "". Vaughan was set to produce alongside Nina Jacobson and Brad Simpson. Production companies involved with the series were expected to include Color Force and FX Productions.