Former President Olusegun Obasanjo, on Sunday, paid glowing tributes to the late former American President, Jimmy Carter, whom he described as a “titan and man of peace”.
At a memorial service held in honour of the late American President, Carter, held at the Chapel of Christ the Glorious King, Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library (OOPL), Abeokuta, Ogun State capital, Obasanjo recalled how Carter stuck out his neck to save his life by seeking his release from prison under the late Head of State, General Sanni Abacha.
Carter, the 39th president of the United States and the recipient of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize for his post-presidential work, died at 100 on December 29, 2024, at his home in Plains, Georgia.
Chief Obasanjo said, “President Carter was one of my foreign friends who stuck their necks out to save my life and to seek my release from prison. On President Carter’s visit to Nigeria, he got Abacha to agree to take me from detention to house arrest on my farm. However, that did not last for too long.
“In the evenings of our lives, I became a victim of a militarist man – Sani Abacha – who wanted to rule Nigeria perpetually till the end of his life. President Carter was one of my foreign friends who stuck their necks out to save my life and to seek my release from prison”.
“On President Carter’s visit to Nigeria, he got Abacha to agree to take me from detention to house arrest on my farm. However, that did not last for too long. Many other friends and leaders intervened, but according to my information, President Carter was the only non-African leader who visited Abacha solely to plead for my release.
“I would remain ever grateful to all who worked for my release from Abacha’s gulag. Abacha ensured that I would not be released. Within a week of his death, I was released by his successor, General Abdulsalami Abubakar. He also facilitated my journey around Africa and the rest of the world to thank all those who worked for my release.
“In the US, I called on President Jimmy Carter, who told me all his efforts with other leaders, and Abacha remained unyielding for my release. Nevertheless, the most surprising thing Carter said was, “Please see Ted Turner and thank him for his generosity.
“He came to me and asked me to get his friend, Obasanjo, released from prison. ‘I will take care of him and his family here or wherever he chooses to live’”. I was touched and moved to tears. I immediately went to Ted, who expressed the same sentiment that President Carter expressed. He proved his generosity, and I returned to President Carter whenever I could spare to express my gratitude.
“I would miss a great and true friend, but I know we shall meet again in Paradise.
“One great lesson I learned from President Carter was that in his leadership, he carried along an army of co-workers who shared the ideal and the burden of the work.
He led by example and in humility, and that made success to attend his way”.
Speaking on the attributes of the late President Carter, Obasanjo described him as “a simple, humble, honest man of God—he would prefer nothing better than a simple but significant service in his memory. He was a humble man of simplicity.
“But why should I decide to have a service in memory of an American President who lived and died almost 5000 miles away? It is because he was a great world leader, a righteous man whose righteousness spread over the world, a lover of humanity, a man of God, and a great and true friend of mine.
“Regarding my early life background, I share a similarity with President Jimmy Carter. He was born into a farming family in Plains, Georgia, and I was born into a farming family in the rural village of Ibogun-Olaogun in Ogun State.
“He grew up under a father and mother who were disciplinarians, who instilled in him the essence of discipline, morality, hard work, integrity, kindness and humility, compassion for the poor and strong belief in God. My parents inculcated similar attributes in me as I grew up in a rural area with no piped water and no electricity, just as in Plains, Georgia, while Jimmy Carter grew up there. He beat me, though, in one respect, there was a road to his settlement; there was no road to my village. We walked to every place or, at best, were carried on bicycles.
“President Carter had a military background, which I had, and we met when I was a military Head of State. But if not that we were both in politics, our paths may not have crossed”.
‘’When I became Nigeria’s military Head of State, one major issue that Africa was facing, among others, was removing the last vestiges of colonisation and getting rid of apartheid all in Southern Africa.
“The then policy of the US Government under President Gerald Rudolph Ford Jr. courageously implemented by Secretary of State, Dr. Henry Kissinger, was, to put it mildly, unsympathetic to African interest in Southern Africa. We stood uncompromisingly on our policy of Africa being the centre-piece of our foreign policy. We could not get along well with the US Government, President Ford, and his Secretary of State regarding their constructive engagement with Southern Africa.
“We were hoping and praying for a change in the US Government leader as elections came up in November 1976 in America. In preparation for the change we hoped for, if it would come, we looked for and reached out to a close collaborator of Presidential Candidate Jimmy Carter, Andy Young. Our prayer was answered as Jimmy Carter won the election, and Andy Young was a Cabinet member of the Administration and US Permanent Representative at the United Nations, UN. The Secretary of State, Cyrus Vance, was a direct opposite of Kissinger”.
“Andy had prepared the ground for the new relationship between Nigeria and the US on one hand and, by extension, between the US and Africa. As soon as Carter was sworn in, I congratulated him, expressing our hope and aspiration for a close and amicable relationship”.
“On January 26, only six days after he assumed office, President Carter wrote me a delightful letter, which in part reads: “As I begin my duties as President of the United States, I want you to know that my administration will join all friends of Africa to help achieve genuine independence and further economic and social progress for all peoples of that continent.
“I recognised that Nigeria has a unique role to play, justified not only by her size and economic importance but also through the extraordinary dedication of her leaders to the ideals of freedom, self-determination, equal rights, and development.
‘’Nigeria’s efforts to achieve these ends at home and abroad are widely known and respected. As a matter of immediate attention, I want to assure you that the United States remains deeply concerned about the situation in southern Africa. We are fully committed to continuing the search for peaceful solutions to the problems of Rhodesia and Namibia.
‘’ My administration will carry on the efforts already begun to bring peace and justice in the region. In the future, we will use our influence and good offices wherever they may be best applied to accomplish this goal”.
‘’The United States does not assume that the search for peace in southern Africa will be easy. Despite these difficulties, we believe giving diplomacy every chance to work is important. I have asked Secretary of State Cyrus Vance to contact you separately to discuss future steps we might take and ways to work together to solve southern Africa’s difficult problems.”
“With less than a month in office, President Carter told us to begin our walking and working together with the US Administration under President Carter, leading to my state visit to the US on October 11, 1977, and culminating in President Carter’s State Visit to Nigeria on March 31- April 3, 1978, the first of such State Visits to any country in Africa by a sitting American President. From then on, we were carried along with whatever the US did in Africa.
“Since 1948, when there had been disagreement and conflict in the Middle East between Israel and Palestine, President Carter was the only American President that had been able to bring about durable peace between Israel and Egypt. Not only did he bring peace and reasonable security between Israel and Egypt, which had implications throughout the Middle East, but he also wrote a book on Israeli-Palestinian problems that gave a clear insight into the history and background and also set out fair, just and equitable solutions that could be followed.
Carter was a man of peace and a man for peace.
“He brought decency to the presidency after the ‘Watergate’ scandal, a major political scandal in the United States involving the administration of President Richard Nixon which began in 1972 and ultimately led to Nixon’s resignation in 1974”.
“His work for peace, conflict resolution, human rights, and so on should have made him a two-term President, but his goodness was misconstrued as weakness, and both the US and the world, especially Africa, lost the opportunity to have his services in the US Government for another four years.
“In a perverted world, people’s goodness may not be often appreciated. But Carter was unstoppable in doing good whether in or out of government. He chose the Carter Centre, the usual and mandatory Presidential Library System, to be the centre of activities for his humanitarian, humanist and humane activities of the fight against guinea worm and polio in the health area, observation of elections in the political area, enhancement of agriculture in food and nutrition security area which was carried with Sasakawa, a Japanese billionaire, and Norman Borlaug, a plant breeder specialist and Nobel Laureate”.
“President Carter made sure that he got me to participate with him in all these activities”.