‘How Obasanjo’s Military Background Cost Him United Nations Secretary-General’

Nigeria’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations (UN) from 1990 to 1999, Prof. Ibrahim Gambari, has narrated how ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo lost out in the race to lead the world body in 1991, recalling being told by a diplomat that “Your candidate (Obasanjo) has no chance in hell of becoming secretary.”

He stated this on Wednesday at the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs (NIIA) in Victoria Island, Lagos during the public presentation of the biography of the first African UN Secretary-General, the late Boutros Boutros-Ghali, who assumed office in 1991 but served only one term till 1996.

According to Gambari, he gathered that Obasanjo’s military background precluded him from being selected by the countries with veto power because they wanted a scribe they could manipulate, not a Secretary-General who will lord it over them.

Going down memory lane on the build up to the choice of the late Boutros-Ghali as the UN Secretary-General in 1991, Gambari said he recalled how some envoy told him: “Your candidate (Olusegun Obasanjo) has no chance in hell of becoming secretary.”

He disclosed that when he sought clarification from the envoy who told him that Obasanjo stood no chance of getting the plum job, “he said ‘No. Listen carefully, when we, the big ones, are looking for a Sec Gen, the emphasis is on the secretary and not on the general.’

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This is despite the former Nigerian leader being the most qualified former head of state, handed over power voluntarily to civilians, and was head of the group that led to the process of the end of apartheid.”

Gambari, a former Chief of Staff to the President Buhari continued, “The thing was that the veto ruling power wanted somebody they could dictate to, not a general, who would be giving them orders. Sometimes they think they are getting a secretary but they end up getting a general.

“Ghali, who they thought would be a secretary turned out to be a general and Koffi Annan, who they thought was a secretary turned out to be a general.

“When you turn out to be different from what the big powers want, they do something about it. Boutros-Ghali was not given a second term, and Koffi Annan was nearly forced to retire over frivolous charges.”

He described his relationship with the late Boutros-Ghali as ‘up close and personal,” adding that apart from being the first UN Secretary-General from the African continent, he was also the first Post-Cold War Secretary General but encountered difficulty organising a security council meeting that had all the heads of states as delegates.

“He hardly had a meeting of the security council where the chief delegates were the heads of states of those member states,” Gambari said, regretting however that “It was under his watch that the UN failed to respond adequately and to prevent genocide and when it was happening, the big powers also did nothing”.