Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has disclosed that the late former United States Ambassador to Nigeria, Walter Carrington, told him about his imminent arrest for alleged coup plot in 1995.
Obasanjo was arrested with the late Gen. Shehu Musa Yar’Adua (retd) and some other military officers in 1995 by late Gen. Sani Abacha and both were sentenced to life in prison.
Olusegun Obasanjo was released in 1998 and became Nigeria’s President while Yar’Adua died in prison in 1997.
Carrington, who was a major figure in Nigeria’s agitation for a return to democratic rule sequel to the annulment of the June 12, 1993 presidential election died recently in the United States.
While writing a condolence message to the wife of the departed envoy, Obasanjo said he was offered political asylum in the United States when he went to Copenhagen, Denmark, for the World Social Summit as Human Development Ambassador of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) but he turned down the offer in spite of its “tempting and assuring nature.”
Obasanjo said the late Ambassador assisted in easing the return to democratic rule in Nigeria during his tenure as US ambassador.
He said: “Carrington was one of the responsible, matured and respected voices to take Nigeria out of the unwholesome situation it had found itself – permanently in crisis, regularly threatened with disintegration, prolongingly devoid of democracy, and economically plundered and mismanaged.
“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 Amb. 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.
“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 will forever live in my mind.
“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.”
