Former President of Nigeria, General Olusegun Obasanjo, has said that the 39th President of the United States of America, Jimmy Carter, was truly a “symbol of power” who understood how to wield his strength responsibly during his tenure as President.
Obasanjo said this in an interview with ARISE NEWS on Monday while paying tribute to the late Carter, who passed away at 100 years old, making him the longest living president of the US at the time of his death.
Obasanjo also said that leaders, both incumbent and past, should learn from Carter’s legacy that one’s work does not simply end once they leave a place of office, but the work should continue for the good of their country and the world at large.
Obasanjo, speaking on Carter’s legacy of peace during his presidential reign, said, “Jimmy Carter, as I’ve said, was a man who understands power, but he also understands that the duty of power is rarely not in using it but in understanding it.”
He went on to say, “The power lies in people knowing it is there and you not using it. Don’t use a hammer to kill an ant, and that is what you see in President Crater. He was humble with power, and he knew how to use power. Bringing Israel and Egypt together was one great achievement in his legacy. And when you read the book that Jimmy Carter wrote on the Palestinian-Israeli problem, he understood the problem. He understood the genesis, and he prescribed what I will call equitable solution, and that is one thing any leader should do. You don’t jump into problems without understanding it, without knowing it.
“There are many ways by which you can kill a chicken, but what is the best way? And that is one good lesson we should learn from President Carter and his legacy.”
Speaking further about Carter’s legacy, Obasanjo said, “He was a great leader by any standard. Humility, his own was all written around him. When he left government, I was on the board of trustees of Ford Foundation, and Ford Foundation had to send us together on an errand. Fort Foundation policy was that up to a certain distance, we will only go by business class. President Carter, as retired President of America, did not insist that we will go by first class. We were together in business class.
“After he left government, he devoted his life to humanitarian affairs, civil rights, and western liberal democracy, and he was persistent on that. And I believe Jimmy Carter is what I call the Symbol of Power, not the bully that people bring that to mean nowadays.”
“He was active until he had no power to be active anymore,” he added.
Obasanjo then called on current and former leaders to continue serving their countries and the world even after leaving office as he said, “I believe a leader – if you have the fortune, the opportunity, or the grace of God to be the president or the prime minister or be at the top politically at your country, and then you recently disengaged from that responsibility, your task should not end there, because the one good thing about that is that rarely whether you spend 2 years, 4 years, 5 years, 10 years, 12 years, you have acquired certain experience.
“You have also made certain friends, and they’re all there to be tapped into for the good of the world, not only for your country. Part of the problem of the world today is what I call deficit of leadership. And I’m not talking about leadership only at the political level. Of course, at the political level matters most because politics drives all other things, but at all levels, and I’m not also talking about incumbent leaders. Incumbent leaders matter more because they have the power and all that goes with the power, but those that also have had opportunity and God has endowed, they should realise that the world we are living in, that we call a village, if anybody fails to play his part and his role in that village, that village will soon be spoiled, and that must be clear to all of us.”
Ozioma Samuel-Ugwuezi
Follow us on:
