Former President, Olusegun Obasanjo, has admitted that he is unsure of his true age, explaining that his closest estimate comes from the ages of his surviving primary school colleagues, none of whom, he noted, is believed to be under 90 years old.
Obasanjo shared this revelation on Sunday during the Toyin Falola Interview Series titled “A Conversation with His Excellency, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo.”
The discussion was steered by Professor Toyin Falola, with Bishop Matthew Kukah and former presidential candidate Professor Kingsley Moghalu also contributing.
According to the former president, several childhood friends and schoolmates are still alive, and their current ages strongly suggest that he may already be over 90, even though he has no definite record of his birth year.
He said, “I don’t know my exact age but I could judge from those who were in school with me, I have given you an example of Olubara (Oba Jacob Olufemi Omolade, the Olubara of Ibara) who is still alive.
“I believe there are six of my classmates in secondary school that I know are still alive and none of them is less than 90 years of age. So I leave it to you to guess what my age could be.”
Obasanjo also used the platform to expand on the mission of the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library, which he described as a national repository built to safeguard Nigeria’s history and enhance the country’s institutional memory.
He said, “We have digitalised over 3m materials. We still have about the same number, 3 million to digitalise.
“The idea is when these materials are digitalised, people can have access to them. That is number one. As document preservation, we preserve the past, take note of the present and we want all these to inspire the future.”
The former leader added that the archive holds a vast range of personal and historic documents, from childhood academic records to confidential letters and artifacts preserved from his time in military detention.
He said, “My school record cards in primary school, I have been able to keep them and when I became President and I wanted to establish the library, they were available to be exhibited.
“My records in primary and secondary school and even the manuscripts of books that I have written, those that I wrote in prison and so on, even crops of maize that I planted when I was in prison, they are there and somehow I was able to keep them.
“Why the Presidential Library? I believe one of the things we don’t do too well in our society is that we don’t keep records too well, institutional memory is not what we do very well.”
