By Olabode Lucas
The United States of America with all imperfections which among others include racial discriminations, excessive materialism, unbridled and unwarranted interferences in the affairs of other countries as the ‘the policeman of the world’, and acute disparity in the economic fortunes of its citizens, is arguably the strongest and most powerful country in the world.
The USA got its strength according to Barack Obama the 44th President of the country, because every race and nationality is present to contribute to the progress of the country. Over the years, the USA has also been fortunate to have visionary leaders whose visions and policies had had a significant impact on the progress of the world. Frank D. Roosevelt, the 32nd President of the country, helped his country through his New Deal policy to survive the trauma of the great depression which ravaged the world between 1929 and1939. He also led the Allies to defeat the Nazi Germany during the Second World War.
The youthful John Kennedy, the 35th President in his idealistic vision based on his New Frontier, urged his people to land a man on the moon within 10 years and this was achieved. His successor, the burly Texan, Lyndon Johnson in 1964 with his Great Society, signed the landmark Civil Rights Bill into law. This law effectively banned racial discrimination which had blighted the image of the USA for years. All these great American presidents carried out their epic achievements, while they were in office as presidents. Unlike these presidents, the USA president that achieved much more for humanity out of office was Jimmy Earl Carter, the 39th President, who died on December 29, 2024 at the age of 100 years.
Read Also: FG pledges adequate compensation for displaced Zungeru communities
Carter who was born in Plains Georgia in 1924 lived longer than any other USA president. He was the eldest of the four children of a father who was a peanut farmer and a mother who was a nurse. As it was prevalent in the southern part of the USA at his time, Jimmy Carter’s father was a segregationist. However, from his youth, Jimmy Carter was fortified by the Baptist faith which remained with him through life.
Jimmy Carter started his career in the Navy where he became an officer who showed special expertise in the technology of submarines and no wonder that later in 2005 a Seawolf- class fast attack submarine was named after him. During his stint in the navy, he married his wife Rosalyn who became his inseparable partner until her death in 2003. Jimmy Carter’s stay in the Navy was cut short by the death of his father in 1953 when he had to return home to manage his father’s ailing peanut farm. He subsequently turned the farm around to make a fortune after initial uncertainties.
Jimmy Carter’s foray into politics started in 1960 at the grass roots level when he contested for the post of the governor of Georgia. He was initially defeated but in 1970 he was eventually elected as the governor. On becoming the governor, he wooed the black community leaders such as Andrew Young and Jesse Jackson. He embraced the Civil Rights struggle and showed profound respect for the Civil Rights icon, Martin Luther King by putting his picture prominently in the governor’s office in Georgia. This was a surprise move from a man whose father was a segregationist; equally it was also a risky action by him politically in a southern state in the USA of 1974 when segregation was rife. Jimmy Carter later that year used his position as governor as a springboard to the White House.
Jimmy Carter’s bid for the White House in 1974 was initially met with derision because he was not then well known nationally. Anytime he was introduced as a potential presidential candidate, such introduction was met with derisive response of ‘Jimmy what?’ from the people. He however, persisted in his campaign and gradually, he was perceived as a fresh and honest face after the trauma of Watergate scandal that toppled Richard Nixon from power in 1974. Jimmy Carter eventually won the nomination of his Democratic Party and in the 1976 presidential election went on to clinch the presidency by narrowly beating Gerald Ford of the Republican Party who took over the presidency after Nixon. He was no doubt propelled to the office through the votes of the blacks, He realised this and he appointed many of them to posts they have never occupied before. Andrew Young was appointed USA representatives at the United Nations.
Many people considered Carter’s tenure as the USA President as lacklustre. During his tenure, he was confronted with many problems which seemingly overwhelmed him. At home, he faced an unending energy crisis, escalating cost of living problems and runaway inflation. Internationally, he was confronted with Russian invasion of the hapless Afghanistan and problems emanating from the overthrow of the Shah of Iran. In confronting Russia for invading Afghanistan, he ordered USA sport men and women to boycott the 1978 Moscow Olympics. This led to some resentment at home because many felt that this action punished the Olympians more than the Russians and moreover, the boycott did not have universal support even among USA friends.
The Iranian problem was more intractable for Carter than any other problem when he was in office. In order to force the USA to send the Shah away from USA, Iranian youths seized 66 US citizens as hostages at the US Embassy in Teheran. It was very humiliating for USA and attempts ordered by Carter to rescue the hostages failed woefully when the planes for the operations crashed on the way to Teheran. With this failure, his bid for a second time in office was doomed as many perceived him as weak and in the 1980 presidential election, he was soundly defeated by Ronald Reagan, the former governor of California who was the Republican candidate.
It was not all doom and gloom during the tenure of Carter as the President of the USA. His tenure will be remembered for the signing of King David Accord in 1978 in which Egypt formally recognised the state of Israel. This was the high point of Carter’s presidency as the accord is still operational today, although it did nothing to solve the larger Palestinian question. Again, on the international scene, he signed a treaty to return Panama Canal to Panama, a treaty the incoming President Trump has threatened to repudiate. Carter was also the first president to call the attention of the world to the danger of climate change.
Carter’s defeat in 1980 did not send him into a cocoon of inactivity and self-pity. Instead, after the election, he used the prestige of his former office to spread his tentacles to help humanity. He subsequently became a diplomat and a mediator across the globe, settling diplomatic problems and this task took him to places like North Korea, Haiti, Serbia, Gaza and other troubled spots of the world. Carter carried out this assignment under the auspices of his newly founded Carter Centre. To help the homeless, Carter and his wife worked with Habitat for Humanity, and they helped to build about 4000 houses for the downtrodden in the society. To enthrone democracy around the world, Carter Centre started election monitoring all over the world. He led his team to monitor elections in Nigeria and his centre gave very damning reports about the election that gave a second term to President Obasanjo despite his friendship with Obasanjo. Another sterling contribution of Jimmy Carter to the world was the involvement of Carter Centre in the global eradication of debilitating diseases of river blindness and guinea worm infection. In this gigantic global project, it is gratifying to note that two top Nigerian scientists, the late Professor Adetokunbo Lucas and Professor Oladele Kale were deeply involved in the formulation and execution of the project.
In 2002, Jimmy Earl Carter was awarded Nobel Peace Prize for ‘his decades of untiring efforts to find peaceful solutions to the international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights and to promote economic and social development.’ Virtually everybody in the world agreed that the award was timely and well deserved. Carter was the third USA President to be awarded Nobel Peace Prize. The others were Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, but Jimmy Carter was the only one that won the prize for his post presidency work.
Carter was an enigma who left the world better than he met it. In 2007, he became part of the World Political Elders, a group started by Nelson Mandela for leaders who were no longer in power. In this group, we had eminent personalities like Kofi Annan, a former UN Secretary General, Mary Robinson of Ireland and Olusegun Obasanjo. The group was formed to mediate in any developing intractable diplomatic problems around the globe.
Carter was a man of faith who even at the old age was a Sunday School Teacher at his home town of Plains in Georgia. He lived a simple life and even as the president of the most powerful country in the world, he shunned many of trappings of the office and after his term as president, he and his wife, Rosalyn returned to their modest house they had lived before he became the president. He was very clean and transparent, and he was quoted as telling a reporter once that ‘it has never been my intention to be rich’. Jimmy Carter’s lifestyle should be an example to modern leaders who hold on tenaciously to transient power and privileges and use their posts to acquire obscene wealth.
To us in Nigeria, Jimmy Carter was the first American president to visit our country in 1978 during the administration of the then General Olusegun Obasanjo and he was one of the world leaders who called for his release when he incarcerated under the fiendish Sani Abacha. How I wish Nigerian politicians would learn a lesson or two from the life of Carter that politics should be of service to the people and not used as avenue for primitive acquisition of wealth.
Carter who will be buried in Plains Georgia today, Thursday January 9 could no doubt be described as an undisputed global icon and a sterling citizen of the world.