Former President
Olusegun Obasanjo has given insight on how he has escaped death at least 12
times in his 78 years on earth. He explained how he survived infant mortality,
bitten by scorpion and how he survived, how he escaped death at Ogun River
where he had gone to learn swimming and how he had accidents uncountable times.
“Being one of two
of my
mother’s surviving children (out of seven), I must have had the grace of God to
cross the hurdle of infant mortality. The other five never lived up to age one.
The vicissitudes of rural life and limited resources did not guarantee survival
for children born in my time and in the place I was born. Growing up in the
village I was bitten by a scorpion once, and I survived it. The local herb and
concoction applied by the native doctor worked in my case. I heard later that
it did not work in some other cases.
“When I was in primary
school in Abeokuta, I went to the Ogun River to try to swim. My friend and
classmate who went with me urged me to dive with him into the water; I asked
him to go in first and I would follow. He dived in and hit his head against a
rock, and he never survived. My mother pulled my ear and warned me never to go
to the river for swimming again. That marked the end of my attempt to learn
swimming.
“When I was attached to
the Welsh Guards in Pirbright, I had an accident while learning to drive. It
could have been fatal for me and and for the oncoming motorcyclist, but we both
survived. On returning to Nigeria, I had another accident in which the military
vehicle I was driving without proper authority was a write-off. I survived with
a fractured hand. As a young officer on a UN Peacekeeping Mission in the Congo
Leopoldville, now Democratic Republic of Congo, I had an encounter with
Congolese soldiers that could have been fatal.
“I returned home from
the Congo and was posted to the Nigerian Army Engineers, where I had to learn
to ride a motorcycle for reconnaissance purposes. I took a motorcycle ride out
alone on training and had a nasty accident where, again, the motorcycle was damaged
beyond repair, and I was saved by wearing a steel helmet. The story of my
escaping death by the skin of my teeth during the civil war when four of my
bodyguards died on the spot has been told elsewhere.
“When I left public
office as a military head of state, I was appointed Distinguished Fellow of the
University of Ibadan in the Institute of African Studies. I was given a house
to stay in when I had work in the university. On one occasion, I was to give a
lecture and to spend the night there; but curiously, I decided to inspect the
whole building and the compound. I found, to everybody’s surprise, a neat hole
cut through the glass window; and on the mosquito wire netting on the window
was a hole close to the head of the bead, just big enough to accommodate the
muzzle of a pistol. I never slept in that house again. The whole university
community, and Professor Tekena Tamuno as the vice-chancellor, was alarmed.
“On my way from Abeokuta
to Ogbomosho to attend the graduation ceremony of Pastor Bolarinwa, who I
sponsored to Baptist Theological Seminary, I was waylaid by armed robbers. They
cut in front of my car to stop it, got out and shot into the air, and entered
their car and drove off. Calmly, I got out of the car with my driver and other
passengers. I came to understand that if they had known that I had been the one
in the car, they would not have zeroed in on that car, or they would have
killed me to avoid getting arrested. I also understood that the police followed
them to a logical conclusion. In addition, I have heard all sorts of fetish
stories about how people tried or were trying to kill me and how I escaped
through supernatural powers. I neither believe in nor practice anything fetish.
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