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Meet 3 Ex-convicts Who Became Presidents In Africa

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If your actions create a legacy that inspires others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, then, you are an excellent leader. Africa over the years has become great as the results of these notable personalities that we share with you today.

Nelson Mandela


Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela (18 July 1918 – 5 December 2013) was a South African anti-apartheid revolutionary, political leader, and philanthropist, who served as President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999. He was the country’s first black head of state and the first elected in a fully representative democratic election.

Mandela
Nelson Mandela

Mandela was kept behind bars a number of times, but most notable was his penal servitude from 1962 to 1990. He spent a total of 28 years in prison after he was found guilty of sabotage and conspiracy to violently overthrow the government via Umkhonto we Sizwe (“Spear of the Nation”, abbreviated MK), a militant group he co-founded in 1961.

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After widespread discontentment, global protests, and pressure from the UN, Mandela was finally granted wholesale freedom in February 1990. He led the ANC to the 1994 elections and became the president of South Africa.

Olusegun Obasanjo

Olusegun Matthew Okikiola Aremu Obasanjo (born 5 March 1937) was a former Nigerian army General who happened to be the president of Nigeria for a times of two being a military ruler from 13th February 1976 to 1st October 1979 and also emerging as a democratically elected president from 29th May 1999 to 29th May 2007.

Olusegun Obasanjo
Olusegun Obasanjo

Obasanjo was taken into custody during the military dictatorship of Sani Abacha (1993-1998). He voiced out contrary to the human rights abuse of the Abacha regime, and was arrested and ‘put under lock and key’ for ostensible involvement in an aborted coup based on attestation derived through torture. Obasanjo was eventually released after the death of Abacha on 8 June 1998.

After his let go, Obasanjo made plans to run for presidency on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, where he triumph over Chief Olu Falae, the joint candidate of the All Peoples Party, APP, and the Alliance for Democracy AD. The ex convict (Obasanjo) who’s wanting to be the president swept the elections with 62.6% of the vote and emerged as the first elected and civilian head of state in Nigeria after 16 years of military rule.

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Kwame Nkrumah

Kwame Nkrumah was the first prime minister and president of Ghana, having led it to independence from Britain in 1957.

In 1949, when the British colonial masters selected 6 middle-class Africans to draft a new constitution that will give Ghana more self-government, Nkrumah who was then leader of the Conventions People Party (CPP) noticed that the exhortation would not give room for full independence and therefore press for a constituent assembly to write the constitution. The then British Governor Charles Arden-Clark refused to commit to this, so Nkrumah called for Positive Action – with unions beginning a general strike on the 8th of January 1950. The strike became violent, so Nkrumah and other CPP leaders were taken into custody and sentenced to 3 years incarceration.

Kwame Nkrumah
Kwame Nkrumah

As Ghana prepared for elections, Nkrumah’s assistant, Komla Agbeli Gbedemah, ran the CPP, with Nkrumah influencing events through smuggled notes written on toilet paper. The election finally ended with the CPP winning 34 of 38 seats, including Nkrumah’s Accra constituency, Arden-Clarke ordered Nkrumah’s release and asked him to form a government. He was Prime Minister from then till Ghana became fully independent in 1957, and became president in 1960.

Source: Africacelebrities.com

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