Jimmy Carter Who Saved Obasanjo’s Life From Abacha’s Gulag Is 100. The World Celebrates A Quintessential Peace maker
The Oasis Reporters
October 2, 2024
Jimmy Carter, the American president who in the late 70s honoured Nigeria with a presidential visit and struck a personal friendship with then Nigerian Head of State General Olusegun Obasanjo is 100 years old today.
Less than twenty years after, Jimmy Carter was to play a pivotal role in ensuring that Obasanjo was not killed in the prison that General Sani Abacha had incarcerated him in.
While Abacha had detained some political leaders in prison under phantom charges of coup plotting etc and was set to get them executed, what saved their lives was a phone call through a smuggled phone into the prison made by Obasanjo.
He told Carter of Abacha’s secret plan to have them executed to enable him stay in office, probably for life.
Alarmed, Jimmy Carter called President Bill Clinton who promptly put a call through to Abacha and the dire warning worked. Abacha instead jailed Obasanjo and the others, but had General Shehu Yar’adua poisoned and killed in prison.
Abacha himself was to die in office suddenly, and Obasanjo lived to depart prison before moving to the presidency for two terms.
The world rejoices with Jimmy Carter today, even as his roles for peace in the Middle East is the talking point now in the current war between Israel, Iran, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Houthis in Yemen and Hamas in Gaza.
Among the American and world leaders that eulogized Jimmy Carter at 100 is this thoughtful note from Barack Obama.
@BarackObama
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“Happy 100th birthday, President Carter! Thank you for your friendship, your fundamental decency, and your incredible acts of service through the @CarterCenter.
Michelle and I are grateful for all you’ve done for this country”.
CNN’s Meanwhile In America reports :
Jimmy Carter’s birthday is a reminder that for US presidents some things never change – like the Middle East’s cruel capacity to derail their administrations.
The 39th president turned 100 on Tuesday, 43 years after he left office after a single term long caricatured as a time of economic malaise and weakened US power, but that history has begun to treat more kindly, given Carter’s record as a peacemaker, his early recognition of alternative energy and his contribution to winning the Cold War.
Turmoil in the Middle East dominated and ultimately felled Carter’s presidency – just as it is consuming Joe Biden’s White House twilight.
But unlike many of his successors, Carter had considerable success forging peace – before a Middle East crisis eventually helped eject him from office. His most significant achievement was the Camp David Accords, reached after exhaustive negotiations between Egypt and Israel concluded at the presidential retreat in Maryland. It was the first peace deal between the Jewish state and one of its Arab foes.
The agreement, signed by Carter, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in 1978, called for a formal peace between the two nations and the establishment of diplomatic relations. It resulted in the Israeli withdrawal from the Sinai Peninsula and foresaw an Israeli exit from the West Bank and Gaza, with promised future negotiations to resolve the Palestinian question.
But the deal left questions unanswered that still fester, including the question of East Jerusalem, and subsequent violence and political unrest between Israel and the Palestinians meant the deal’s full potential was never realized. But despite everything that has happened since, Israel and Egypt have never gone to war again.
The events that swept Carter from office and handed the White House to Republican Ronald Reagan erupted on November 4, 1979, a year before the US election when students who supported Iran’s Islamic revolution seized the US Embassy in Tehran and took 66 Americans hostage. The 444-day standoff turned the nation against Carter — as did a disastrous rescue bid in which a US helicopter carrying special forces crashed in the desert, killing eight US servicemen.
Iran released the remaining hostages 20 minutes after Reagan was sworn in on January 20, 1981 – a personal blow to Carter that set the tone for nearly a half century of antagonism with Washington that is again being highlighted, as Israel wages war against Iranian proxies in Gaza and Lebanon.
Iran released the remaining hostages 20 minutes after Reagan was sworn in on January 20, 1981 – a personal blow to Carter that set the tone for nearly a half century of antagonism with Washington that is again being highlighted, as Israel wages war against Iranian proxies in Gaza and Lebanon.
Greg Abolo with
CNN (Meanwhile In America)
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