Excerpts- HOW AWOLOWO DISGRACED US AND EMBARRASSED ME, I WILL NEVER FORGET

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The second landmark of 1968 was the speech of Chief Obafemi Awolowo to the summit of Head of State of the OAU when he came to represent General Gowon. Chief Awolowo arrived in Algeria through Rome in the evening of the day of the summit. As expected, I paid a courtesy visit to the Chief after he had rested a bit. I offered him a ten- page speech praising our host  President Houari Boumediene, and thanking him for hosting the summit particularly for the support he had been giving Nigeria in the war against Biafra. Boumediene offered Nigeria help in the purchase of arms and in providing pilots to fly some sorties on our planes. In effect, he was regarded as one of the good friends of Nigeria.

The speech I gave to Chief Awolowo also thanked the Heads of State present for their support for Nigeria in adhering to Article 3 of the Charter calling for the maintenance of the territorial integrity of all states. It was the standard speech of a state looking for support of the OAU and the United Nations. Chief Awolowo thanked me and collected the draft speech. Apparently, he decided that he had not come all the way to Algeria to give a bland speech, so he set the speech aside and spent the night writing his own speech with the help of his secretary -a twenty pages speech.

Chief Awolowo read his speech to the summit on the second day of his arrival in Algeria. As the Chief read his speech, I began to sweat and was literally alarmed. It became obvious that Chief had not come to talk on the civil war, but to castigate African leaders who had seized power through coup d'etat and other undemocratic means. He was not particularly happy that we were holding a meeting called by Boumedeine who had overthrown one of the early heroes of Africa -Ben Bella. Ben Bella along with Nkrumah and others fought colonialism to the bitter end. I glanced at my colleague, the Ambassador of Algeria to Ethiopia with whom I had spoken extensively before coming to Algeria, assuring him that my Head of State would use the occasion to acknowledge the assistance which Boumediene had been rendering to Nigeria. I was sure he must have felt that I betrayed him. The Chief's speech ended and he received a lukewarm applause from African leaders. Chief Awolowo had spoken  as a statesman taking advantage of the fact that he was on an international stage and used the opportunity to bring attention to bad governance by African Heads of State of the 1960s, most of whom were in the audience-Mobutu, Bongo,Enyadema, Boumediene.

I confess that I was embarrassed at the tone and content of the speech. It was obvious that I did not know that Chief Awolowo was a man who held on to certain principles which he believed in and was quite prepared to speak out on them to any audience. When he returned to his hotel, I went to meet him and told him I was embarrassed by his speech and that he had made life more difficult for me when I go back to Addis Ababa. He looked at me and shook his head. He said he was sorry I felt that way. The truth was that most of the African leaders who were sitting in the conference hall were simply very bad leaders and he for one could not pretend that they were great leaders just because he found himself in Algeria. He was sorry that I felt that the speech would make my work more difficult. But if I took time to know him better, through his writings and speeches, I would not have been surprised nor would I have been embarrassed. In any case, it was my duty as a diplomat to educate my colleagues about the man who spoke, as someone who always spoke his mind and assure them that General Gowon held all of them in high regard. I took a look at Chief Awolowo and felt rather proud that I had the privilege to be serving a leader who was bold enough to speak to African leaders the way he did.

I was to meet Chief Awolowo almost a decade later when he came to Washington. I was then the Ambassador to the United State. He said simply, "I see that you have moved on since we last met. I am happy you are doing well." The Chief came with his daughters and I entertained them by bringing food to their hotel. It was by far a more congenial meeting. However, the memory of our first meeting remains permanently etched in my memory.

Olusola Sanu, Audacity on the Bound: A Diplomatic Odyssey.

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