Former Nigeria’s President, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, has said former US Ambassador to Nigeria, Walter C. Carrington offered him political asylum in America during the authoritarian regime of maximim ruler, General Sani Abacha in 1995.
Obasanjo, in a condolence letter to the wife of the late envoy who died last week, Arese, said Carrington warned him against returning to the country from a foreign trip when he learnt of his impending arrest by Abacha.
As US ambassador to Senegal and Nigeria, and previously as a Peace Corps director, Carrignton’s love for Africa knows no bound.
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“The land of my fathers,” he once wrote, “has intrigued me ever since as a boy I pondered the poet Countee Cullen’s question — ‘What is Africa to me?”
Obasanjo said Carrington contributed greatly to restoring Nigeria to democratic rule after 16 years of military dictatorship.
He said: “During his tenure as Ambassador, Carrington, helped in easing the move to democratic rule in the country, having met Nigeria under the military rule, which had run consecutively for over a decade and bred a culture of arbitrariness, flagrant abuse of human rights and disdain for the rule of law, all of which relegated our dear country, Nigeria, to the unenviable league of pariah states in the comity of nations.
“Indeed, I recall sometime in 1995, that on one of my trips to Copenhagen to attend World Social Summit as Human Development Ambassador of the United Nations Development Programme, I received the most touching of the warnings, pieces of advice and offers to me from Carrington.
“He called me in Copenhagen and told me categorically that I was going to be arrested on returning home and, therefore, advised me not to return home.
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“But he did not stop it there; he offered me political asylum by his government in the US.
“That was both touching and assuring, but I decided that, tempting and assuring as the offer was, I would not take it.
“I came back and was arrested and imprisoned by Abacha.
“No doubt, his generous assistance to my family while I was a political prisoner makes me forever indebted to him.
“When I was in prison, he was one of the few foreign Ambassadors who regularly visited my wife to encourage her and to find out how I was doing in prison.
“I can proudly say he was a true friend and brother.”
