NGScorecard

Signed the Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Act, establishing the ICPC as Nigeria's first dedicated anti-corruption commission with powers to investigate and prosecute bribery and abuse of office.

Justice Mustapha Akanbi was appointed as founding chairman, and the ICPC began investigating public officials for the first time under a specialised legal framework. Its impact was initially modest compared with the later-established EFCC, but it created the institutional template for subsequent anti-corruption enforcement.

Signed legislation establishing the EFCC, giving Nigeria a dedicated agency with powers to investigate and prosecute financial crimes, money laundering, and advance-fee fraud, partly in response to international pressure over Nigeria's reputation for financial crime.

Under founding chairman Nuhu Ribadu, the EFCC pursued a string of high-profile prosecutions, including Inspector-General Tafa Balogun and Bayelsa Governor Diepreye Alamieyeseigha, and helped recover looted Abacha-era funds. It became the most consequential anti-corruption institution created during the term, though later criticised for uneven, sometimes politically selective enforcement.

Directed the Nigerian Communications Commission to auction GSM mobile telecommunications licences, ending the state monopoly held by NITEL and opening the sector to competition.

MTN, Econet (later Zain/Airtel), and MTEL launched competing mobile networks, and subscriptions grew from near zero to tens of millions within a few years — one of the clearest, most transformative infrastructure successes of the era, though NITEL itself never recovered and was eventually wound down.

CBN Governor Charles Soludo, backed by the presidency, directed all Nigerian banks to raise minimum capital to ₦25 billion by December 2005, a roughly twelve-fold increase from the previous requirement.

The sector consolidated from 89 banks to 25 by early 2006 through mergers and capital raises, producing far larger, better-capitalised institutions capable of financing bigger transactions. A small number of the consolidated banks nonetheless later failed, but the reform is widely regarded as one of the era's most significant.

Concluded a negotiated agreement with the Paris Club of creditor nations under which Nigeria would pay roughly $12 billion to clear arrears in exchange for an $18 billion write-off of its approximately $30 billion external debt stock.

The deal substantially reduced Nigeria's debt service burden in the final years of the term, freeing fiscal space that contributed to the strong capital budget growth seen in 2006. It remains one of the largest debt relief packages any country negotiated in that era.

Directed the withholding of federal statutory allocations owed to Lagos State's local governments after the state, under opposition governor Bola Tinubu, created additional local council development areas without National Assembly approval.

The Supreme Court ruled the withholding unconstitutional in 2004, but the federal government continued withholding funds for a period even after the ruling, before eventually complying. The episode was widely seen as a politically motivated action against an opposition-controlled state, and the funds were ultimately restored.

Ordered a military operation against the town of Odi in Bayelsa State following the killing of a group of police officers by local youths, in what the government described as a response to escalating Niger Delta militancy.

The military operation destroyed most of the town and killed a large number of civilians, drawing sharp condemnation from human rights organisations as a disproportionate collective punishment. A federal court ordered the government to pay compensation to the community, a case still unresolved by the end of the term. The episode deepened, rather than eased, Niger Delta grievances.

The administration backed a constitutional amendment bill that would have removed the two-term limit on the presidency, widely understood as intended to allow Obasanjo to seek a third term in 2007.

The bill was defeated in the Senate in May 2006 after sustained opposition from civil society, the press, and rival politicians including Vice President Atiku Abubakar. Its failure preserved Nigeria's constitutional term limits and is regarded as a landmark moment for the country's democratic institutions, though it also permanently fractured Obasanjo's relationship with Atiku.