Jimmy Carter and I

In my then 17-year journalism practice, I had interviewed countless personalities with little or no emotion. But in the presence of Jimmy Carter, the 39th President of the United States of America, in his Atlanta, Georgia office sometime in September 2003, I was awed.

The interview had been scheduled long before I jetted out of Lagos on a British Airways flight on 22 September 2003, a day after missing my initial flight via London. The arrangement was for me to connect with my publisher at Africa Today magazine, Kayode Soyinka, and we would then both fly British Airways to Atlanta. The pan-African magazine, of which I was Managing Editor (West Africa), had scheduled a special report on the Carter Centre’s guinea worm eradication campaign in Africa. But just as I missed my initial flight, I got the news from my boss that he was not issued a United States visa at the last minute. So the responsibility fell on me to cover the anti-guinea worm conference for Africa Today, all alone in Atlanta.

My schedule was tight throughout the conference, joining other participants on Day 2. Several interviews were scheduled, including one with former Head of State, General Yakubu Gowon (rtd.), in between no fewer that 10 sessions of the conference.

When Sandra, one of the Carter Centre staff I had got familiar with, signalled to me that it was time for the interview with the former United States President, I quietly left the session in progress. We walked less than five minutes within the vast Carter Centre to the big masquerade’s office. He ushered me into a seat facing him and asked for my place of origin in Nigeria. “Abeokuta”, I responded, and his face glowed.

“Oh, the same place with my good friend, President Obasanjo”? “Yes”, I said with an explanation. “We’re from the same section in Abeokuta. He’s the Balogun of Owu-Abeokuta, where I am a Prince”. “Oh! That’s good”. Then he began to say nice things about the former Nigerian leader.

I had apparently forgotten that I had only 15 minutes for the interview, and was enjoying the old man’s tale about Obasanjo and Nigeria. Sandra came to the rescue. She signalled to me, directing her hand to her wrist watch. I got the cue and began the interview, which was focused on the Carter Centre and its medical interventions in Africa.

As I walked back to the conference hall, Sandra said that the former United States President must have enjoyed the interview to have given me 10 more minutes. He probably would have endured me for much longer if he had not been reminded of another appointment.

I was looking forward to meeting President Carter again the following year when the  Carter Centre had an outreach programme in Ghana, visiting many guinea worm ravaged areas between 29 January and 5 February 2004. But he could not make it with the team. I was the only Nigerian journalist on the road trip from Accra to Tamale, in northern Ghana, a Guinea worm endemic area at that time.

The Carter Centre had nicely produced the 16-page supplement I wrote for the October 2003 edition of Africa Today in a special publication, and included a copy in the conference bag of each participant. I was given a session to speak about my experience in Atlanta.

I would not have made that trip to have the Carter interview, if the United States embassy in Lagos had had its way. Even with the return ticket sent to me by the Carter Centre and evidence of funding, plus my previous travels to cities in Europe and the Middle East, the visa officer who interviewed me stamped “DENIED” on my passport.

Thereafter, I walked into a cybercafe at Walter Carrington Crescent, Ikoyi, Lagos to report to the Carter Centre and my boss in London that I would be missing the guinea worm eradication conference. Within the hour, I got a call from the embassy, apologising for the visa denial, and urging me to return to the mission house the next day. The Carter Centre had apparently complained to the powers-that-be following my email. I was asked to wait for a call the next day.

That next day was scheduled for a boycott of GSM services by groups of subscribers canvassing for tariff reductions and improvement in service delivery by the telecoms operators. I was involved in one of the groups. We campaigned that handsets must be switched off all that day. Up till today, I still didn’t know how the United States embassy’s call got through to my phone. Lol!!!

I was asked to come in through the Head of Chancery’s entrance, and an official collected my passport with another apology over the previous day’s incident. By the time I returned to the embassy about an hour later, my two-year visa was ready.

On my second trip to the United States for a public relations conference in 2008, I did not face the scrutiny of an interview by a visa officer. One of the documents I armed myself with was a copy of Africa Today magazine that had the Carter Centre’s special pullout. In the editor’s page was the photograph I had with President Carter in his office five years earlier. I opened the page and tossed the copy to the visa officer. Of course, he could recognise his 39th President. “Is that you?”. It was a rhetorical question. My “Yes” elicited his exclamation: “Wow”!

“Are you married”? Yes, I responded, as I wondered if he had a wife to give me as part of the visa package!

“Why is your wife not travelling with you?”, he enquired, while stamping the two-year visa on my passport. My wife is yet to forgive me for not going with her to the embassy.

Good night, President Jimmy Carter!