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  • Jimmy Carter

    Jimmy Carter

    Jimmy Carter: Village Boy, Naval Officer, Peanut Farmer, State Senator, Governor, President, University Distinguished Professor, Human Rights and Peace Advocate, Nobel Laureate, and a Centurion (1924-2024)

    When Jimmy Carter, the 39th President of the United States (1977-1981), died on Sunday, December 29, 2024, two months after turning 100, I felt like I lost someone I knew very closely, although I never met him one-on-one. I created a bond with him because he was the first American President, whose career and election as President I followed very closely during my early years in the United States. I was attracted to him because his humble beginnings as the first son of a peanut farmer in a small village mirrored mine as the first son of a cocoa farmer in a small farming village. Moreover, each of us owned a small portion of land on our father’s farm on which we planted the same crop as our father’s. But that’s where the comparison ends! Carter rose from these humble beginnings to become the most powerful man in the world. The long title of this piece provides a trajectory of his progress through life. I focus here on his rock-and-roll presidency.

    Carter became President in 1977 at a time of uncertainty in American politics, following the Watergate scandal and the fallout from the Vietnam War. Carter was a Washington outsider, unknown to the wider political establishment beyond his home state of Georgia. Nevertheless, voters quickly bought into his straight talk and “I will never lie to you” mantra, drawing a sharp contrast to Nixon’s Watergate scandals. He pledged to restore a sense of morality to domestic and foreign policy and pursue the maintenance of world peace.

    Accordingly, early in his administration, Carter issued presidential directives to simplify the management of foreign policy and to focus on the maintenance of peace, nuclear non-proliferation, the pursuit of human rights, and international cooperation. He advocated going beyond East-West concerns to focusing on the developing world to fully harness global interdependencies.

    Carter’s major domestic and foreign policy achievements came within the first two years of his administration. He began with bold domestic policies. He pardoned protesters and resisters of the Vietnam war and those who dodged the draft to fight in the war. He killed funding for the B-1 bomber plane to signal his peace advocacy. He also pushed for a comprehensive bill to protect consumers. Following his dislike for backroom dealings rampant in Washington, he opposed “pork barrel” bills (like Nigerian budget padding), which legislators often attach to major bills. Carter labelled them as wasteful and corrupt, which left a bad taste in the legislators’ mouths. This laid the seed of a frosty relationship with Congress.

    Nevertheless, he pushed ahead with innovative bills. He established the Department of Energy and created a national energy policy on a tripod of price control, conservation, and technology. He even installed Solar panels on the White House to demonstrate his commitment to alternative energy sources. He also promoted energy conservation measures, including automotive mileage standards and reduced industry’s use of fuels.

    Carter also created the Department of Education with promises of equity, excellence, and upward mobility. Moreover, at a time when little was known about climate change, Carter pushed through Congress important legislation on environmental protection. He also got legislation through on transportation to deregulate the airline, trucking, and railroad industries, which resulted in lower transportations costs for consumers.

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    Carter’s foreign policy successes also came early in his administration. He successfully negotiated several historic agreements and diplomatic relations, which endure till today. First, in 1977 and 1978, he negotiated two agreements with Panama over the Panama Canal, one of which would transfer the Canal to Panama by 1999.

    Second, in September 1978, he successfully mediated an historic peace treaty between Israeli Prime Minister, Menachem Begin, and Egyptian President, Anwar Sadat, which led to the normalisation of relations between the two countries.

    Third, on December 15, 1978, after months of secret negotiations, mediated by Carter, United States and China, recognised one another and agreed to establish official diplomatic relations.

    Fourth, this was followed the following year (1979) by the successful negotiation of the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty II (SALT II), which was signed between the United States and the then Soviet Union to limit the number of nuclear weapons each country owned. However, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan later that year forced Carter to delay Senate ratification of the treaty, which has remained unsigned till today.

    Carter’s progress with governance was eventually limited by four factors. One, the frosty relationship he had developed with Congress, including leaders of his own party, soon limited his ability to get bills through Congress. His veto on some bills was even overturned by Congress.

    Two, although the economy was in stagnation when Carter assumed office, it dipped further because of petrol price hike, following high increases in oil price by OPEC. As a result, inflation hit food and commodity markets, and unemployment figures dipped even further. These problems did not abate even as his reelection drew close.

    Three, the Iran hostage crisis consumed the last quarter of his administration. Iranian students, who supported the Iranian revolution, which led to the deposition of the Shah of Iran, had held 53 American Embassy workers and visitors hostage over the asylum granted to the deposed Shah, who was receiving cancer treatment in the United States.

    Finally, Carter’s administration suffered from trust deficit in some members of his cabinet, including his Budget Director, the Treasury Secretary, and his Chief of Staff, each of whom was accused of one unsavoury practice or the other. Although the charges against some of them were shown to be false, the damage had already been done. Carter’s poor media image further complicated matters. His speech on the economy (dubbed the “malaise” speech), in which he blamed the crisis of confidence on the American people themselves, received negative press coverage and poor public reception. The firing or redeployment of some cabinet members was interpreted as acknowledgement of failure.

    At the end of the day, public perception of Carter’s leadership did not correspond with the reality of his performance as he pushed through Congress more legislation and successful presidential initiatives than those of his immediate predecessors and successors. No wonder then he lost reelection in a landslide to Republican Ronald Reagan. To this day, Republicans have continued to seek ways of dampening Carter’s record of accomplishments. For example, President Reagan removed the Solar panels from the White House on assumption of office, and, recently, President-elect Donald Trump promised to take back the Panama Canal and even abolish the Department of Education.

    On their return to Plains in 1981 after losing re-election, Carter and Rosalyn moved back into their two-bedroom bungalow. He first resumed the family peanut business, which had been run down while he was in the White House. In the meantime, he got the Carter Center built in collaboration with Emory University in Atlanta, where he was offered, and accepted, a University Distinguished Professorship in 1982.

    The concluding part of this piece will focus on details of Carter’s post-presidency; the work of the Carter Centre; the contributions of his wife; global perceptions of his contributions to humanity; and my own analysis of the man and his accomplishments.

  • Jimmy Carter (1924 – 2024)

    Jimmy Carter (1924 – 2024)

    Described as the longest-lived former US president, Jimmy Carter, who died on December 29, 2024 was perhaps more remarkable for his post-presidential years. He was 100. A member of the Democratic Party, he served as the 39th president of the United States from 1977 to 1981. He was the first American president to visit Nigeria, from March 31 to April 3, 1978.

    Strikingly, more than 20 years after his presidency, in December 2002 he received the prestigious Nobel Peace Prize “for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development.” This underlined his post-presidency efforts.

    His path to America’s highest political office and, by extension, arguably the most powerful political position in the world, included military service and farming.  After graduating from the United States Naval Academy with a Bachelor of Science degree in 1946, he became a submariner and rose to the rank of lieutenant. He was involved in the navy’s nuclear submarine programme.

    His father’s death in 1953 led to his resignation from the navy to take over the family peanut business in Plains, Georgia. The transition from naval officer to farmer was challenging. He studied agriculture to equip himself for his new role and succeeded in expanding the family’s peanut-growing business. 

    He became a community leader and served on county boards, supervising education, the hospital authority, and the library. He won election to the Georgia Senate in 1962, and also won the gubernatorial election in 1971 to become Georgia’s 76th governor. In his inaugural speech as governor, he declared that “the time for racial discrimination is over.”  He prioritised civil rights, and discouraged racism.

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    When in December 1974 he announced his presidential aspiration, his name recognition was quite low. He was, however, elected president in November 1976. His campaign focused on inequality, optimism and change. His victory over Republican incumbent Gerald Ford in the presidential election was attributed partly to his significant support among black voters in states decided by close margins.

    Domestically, his administration was credited with a comprehensive energy programme, deregulation in energy, transportation, communications, and finance, major educational programmes and important environmental protection legislation, among others. 

    Internationally, his administration’s achievements included the Panama Canal treaties, the Camp David Accords, the treaty of peace between Egypt and Israel, the SALT II treaty with the Soviet Union, and the establishment of US diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China. He also championed human rights across the world.

    Carter’s presidency was marked by “an economic malaise.” However, the Iran hostage crisis contributed mainly to his landslide loss to Republican Ronald Reagan in the 1980 presidential election. In November 1979, 53 US diplomats and citizens were held hostage by a group of Iranian university students who took over the US Embassy in Tehran. They supported the Iranian Revolution and were hostilely opposed to America’s perceived attempts to undermine it. Carter described the incident as an act of “blackmail,” and the hostages as “victims of terrorism and anarchy.”  The hostages were released in January 1981, after he had left office. 

    After his exit from power, he created in 1982 another power platform in the form of The Carter Center, which he founded with his wife, Rosalynn, in partnership with Emory University.  Also, he became University Distinguished Professor at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.  

    A “nonpartisan and nonprofit” organisation, the Center “addresses national and international issues of public policy.” In its words, it is involved in global “efforts to resolve conflict, promote democracy, protect human rights, and prevent disease and other afflictions. The Center has spearheaded the international effort to eradicate Guinea worm disease, which is poised to be the second human disease in history to be eradicated.” It has positively affected the lives of people in more than 80 countries.

    Carter and the Center notably engaged in conflict mediation in Ethiopia and Eritrea (1989), North Korea (1994), Liberia (1994), Haiti (1994), Bosnia (1994), Sudan (1995), the Great Lakes region of Africa (1995-96), Sudan and Uganda (1999), Venezuela (2002-2003), Nepal (2004-2008), Ecuador and Colombia (2008), the Middle East (from 2003), and Mali (from 2018). Under him, the Center sent 114 election-observation missions to the Americas, Africa, and Asia, including Nigeria (1998).

    As a politician, he declared that he was a born-again Christian. Indeed, he was a man of faith, which may well have influenced his political life.  He taught Sunday school in the Maranatha Baptist Church of Plains.  He authored 32 books, including A Government as Good as Its People (1977), Meditations on Scripture for a Living Faith (1997), Our Endangered Values: America’s Moral Crisis (2005), Beyond the White House: Waging Peace, Fighting Disease, Building Hope (2007), We Can Have Peace in the Holy Land: A Plan That Will Work (2009), White House Diary (2010), Through the Year with Jimmy Carter: 366 Daily Meditations from the 39th President (2011), and A Full Life: Reflections at Ninety (2015). 

    In a posthumous tribute, US President Joe Biden called him a “man of principle, faith, and humility.”  He was reported to have told journalists, after losing reelection, that he would not pursue personal enrichment in his subsequent public life. He kept his word. He was non-materialistic and demonstrated a sense of a higher purpose. Those were life lessons.   

  • Jimmy Carter’s African legacy: peacemaker, negotiator and defender of rights

    Jimmy Carter’s African legacy: peacemaker, negotiator and defender of rights

    By Nancy Mitchell

    When historians and pundits praise Jimmy Carter’s achievements as the US president and extol his exemplary post-presidential years, they mention the recognition of China, the Panama Canal Treaties and the Camp David Accords. Almost no one mentions what Carter, who has died, achieved in Africa during his presidency. This is a serious oversight.

    When I interviewed President Carter in 2002, he told me: “I spent more effort and worry on Rhodesia than I did on the Middle East”.

    The archival record supports the former president’s claim. Reams of documents detail Carter’s sustained and deep focus during his presidency on ending white rule in Rhodesia, and helping to bring about the independence of Zimbabwe.

    There were several reasons for Carter’s focus on southern Africa. First, realpolitik. Southern Africa was the hottest theatre of the Cold War when Carter took office in January 1977. A year earlier, Fidel Castro had sent 36,000 Cuban troops to Angola to protect the leftist MPLA from a South African invasion backed by the Gerald Ford administration. The Cubans remained in Angola until 1991.

    Mozambique was no longer governed by America’s NATO ally, Portugal, but instead by the left-leaning Frelimo. Apartheid South Africa – so recently a stable, pro-American outpost far from the Cold War – suddenly faced the prospect of being surrounded by hostile black-ruled states.

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    The unfolding events in southern Africa riveted Washington’s attention on Rhodesia, where the insurgency against the white minority government of Ian Smith was escalating. One week after the Carter administration took office it assessed the crisis in Rhodesia:

    “This situation contains the seeds of another Angola … If the breakdown of talks means intensified warfare, Soviet/Cuban influence is bound to increase”.

    The administration knew that if the war did not end, the Cuban troops might cross the continent to help the rebels.

    And then what?

    It was unthinkable that the Carter administration, with its stress on human rights, would intervene in Rhodesia to support the racist government of Ian Smith. But, given the Cold War, it was equally unthinkable that it would stand aside passively enabling another Soviet-backed Cuban victory in Africa. Therefore, the administration’s first Presidential Review Memorandum on southern Africa, written immediately after Carter took office, announced:

    “In terms of urgency, the Rhodesian problem is highest priority”.

    The Carter administration assembled a high-powered negotiating team, led by UN Ambassador Andrew Young and Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, to coordinate with the British and hammer out a settlement. These negotiations, spearheaded by the Americans, led to the Lancaster House talks in Britain and the free elections in 1980 and black majority rule in an independent in Zimbabwe.

    There was another reason for Carter’s interest in southern Africa: race. Carter grew up in the segregated South of the 1920s and 1930s. As a child, he did not question the racist strictures of the Jim Crow South, but as he matured, served in the US Navy and was elected governor of Georgia, his worldview evolved.

    He appreciated how the civil rights movement had helped liberate the US South from its regressive past, and he regretted that he had not been an active participant in the movement. When I asked Carter why he had expended so much effort on Rhodesia, part of his explanation was:

    “I felt a sense of responsibility and some degree of guilt that we had spent an entire century after the Civil War still persecuting blacks, and to me the situation in Africa was inseparable from the fact of deprivation or persecution or oppression of Black people in the South”.

    Parallels with the US South

    Carter’s belief that there were parallels between the freedom struggles in the US South and in southern Africa may have been naïve, but it was important.

    Influenced by Andrew Young, who had been a close aide to Martin Luther King, Carter transcended the knee-jerk anti-communist reaction of previous American presidents to the members of the Patriotic Front, the loose alliance of insurgents fighting the regime of Ian Smith.

    Young challenged the Manichaean tropes of the Cold War. He explained in 1977:

    “Communism has never been a threat to me … Racism has always been a threat – and that has been the enemy of all of my life”.

    Young helped Carter see the Patriotic Front, albeit leftist guerrillas supported by Cuba and the Soviet Union, as freedom fighters. Therefore, unlike the Gerald Ford administration which had shunned the Front and tried to settle the conflict through negotiations with the white leaders of Rhodesia and South Africa, Carter considered the Front the key players. He brought them to the fore of the negotiations. This was extraordinarily rare in the annals of US diplomacy during the Cold War.

    Carter has not received the credit his administration deserves for the Zimbabwe settlement. It was a success not only in moral terms, enabling free elections in an independent country. It also precluded a repetition of the Cuban intervention in Angola. It was Carter’s signal achievement in sub-Saharan Africa.

    Angola and the Cold War reflexes

    Carter also improved US relations with the continent as a whole. He increased trade, diplomatic contacts and, simply, treated Black Africa with respect.

    During the war in the Horn of Africa, he resisted intense pressure to throw full US support behind the Somalis when the Somali government waged a war of aggression against leftist Ethiopia. His administration attempted valiantly to negotiate a settlement in Namibia and condemned apartheid in South Africa.

    But in Angola, as historian Piero Gleijeses’ superb research has shown, Carter reverted to Cold War reflexes. He asserted that the US would restore full relations with Angola only after the Cuban troops had departed. This, even though he knew that the Cubans were there by invitation of the Angolan government, and were essential to hold the South Africans at bay. Carter’s was the typical response of US governments to any perceived communist threat. But it serves to highlight – by contrast – how unusual was the administration’s policy of embracing the Patriotic Front in Zimbabwe.

    For the next 40 years, Carter focused more on sub-Saharan Africa than on any other region of the world. The Carter Centre’s almost total eradication of Guinea worm has saved an estimated 80 million Africans from this devastating disease. Its election monitoring throughout the continent, and its conflict resolution programmes, have bolstered democracy.

    Carter’s work in Africa, and especially in Zimbabwe, forms a significant and underappreciated part of his impressive legacy.

    •Mitchell is professor of History, North Carolina State University, United States. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. https://theconversation.com/jimmy-carters-african-legacy-peacemaker-negotiator-and-defender-of-rights.

  • Jimmy Carter: An unforgettable global citizen

    Jimmy Carter: An unforgettable global citizen

    The 39th United States President, James Earl Carter junior (October 1, 1924 -December 29, 2024) lived a full life and there is no doubt that his Christian faith influenced his long and exceptionally successful and impactful life. I had wanted to write about the late prime minister of India, Manmohan Singh (September 26, 1932 – December 26, 2024) who died three days before President Jimmy Carter at the age of 92. He too was a man of faith, a Sikh by birth whose simplicity, scholarship and devotion to duty touched the lives of millions of Indians.

    Of course Jimmy Carter’s life and death are of greater significance in terms of reach and impact because of the power of the United States. What is significant in their lives is the longevity; Carter lived over a hundred years while Prime Minister Singh lived over 90 years in a world where the average life span ranges between 50 and 60.

    Jimmy Carter was born in a small village of Plains in the backwoods of State of Georgia in America in what is regarded as the Deep South of the country usually associated with slavery and its enduring legacy of racism, segregation and intolerance. He rose against this background to the height of the American presidency, a position which he imbued with compassion, tolerance and collective governance in which he gave positions of prominence to black people like Andrew Young, whom he made ambassador to the United Nations and gave black people a feeling of belonging and presence in the United States.

    There is something interesting about American history and politics especially as they concern the progress of black peoples in the country. The presidents who made more impact on the lives of black peoples are usually from the Southern part of the USA. Lyndon Baines Johnson, the 36th president of the USA from 1963 to 1969 was very pivotal in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1965 which enfranchised millions of Black Americans and gave them a voice in politics. It is not only Democrats that should be commended in this regard .Presidents George H. Bush and his son, George Bush gave blacks prominent positions in their governments but it was President Carter who opened the way although Presidents John F Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson had laid the foundation of Black empowerment.

    I lived in Montgomery county,  Maryland  more or less a stone throw from the White House during  the presidency of Jimmy Carter  and I was privileged to see the influence of President Carter in the unfolding liberalism in the United States even though he himself was regarded as Conservative evangelical Christian from the South which was regarded as the bastion of lingering racial prejudice against blacks.

    His fairness and honesty showed their effect in his foreign policy. He brought the Jews in Israel and the Arabs together  in the Camp David Agreement negotiated over a week between President Anwar Sadat of Egypt and Prime Minister Menachem Begin in 1978 under the prodding of President Carter. This led to peace agreement and exchange of ambassadors between Israel and Egypt which have endured until today. It also led incrementally to peace between Israel and the kingdom of Jordan. Although President Anwar Sadat was assassinated for this by Muslim die-hards but this peace accord has remained the corner stone for which an eventual peace in the Middle East may revolve.

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    President Carter also signed with President Martín Torrijos of Panama series of treaties in 1977 which eventually led to the transfer of the Panama Canal Zone to the government of Panama in 1999, a treaty which the coming President Donald J. Trump is threatening to revoke because he feels that American shipping interests are not receiving fair treatment vis a vis Chinese shipping.   President Carter also in December 1978 normalized relations with China following the tentative steps of Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. He realized how important it was for America to have normal relations with the People’s Republic of China despite America’s commitment to the defence of Taiwan.  He also felt proper relations with China would give the US opportunity to have triangular relations with China and the USSR. This step, President Carter in his reminiscence, said was his greatest achievement of his presidency.

    President Carter also signed in Vienna in 1979 with the USSR president Leonid Brezhnev the so-called SALTII treaty proposing a limit of the number of missiles with multiple independent nuclear warheads. Even though the treaty failed to limit the arms race, it however proved that the two superpowers were willing to reopen negotiations on nuclear arms limitations. The treaty was however not ratified because of the opposition of Republicans and conservative Democrats. The invasion of the Soviet Union of Afghanistan shortly after in December 1979 after the abortive SALTII treaty led to a freeze in American-Russian relations culminating in the American-led boycott of the Olympics games in Moscow in summer of 1980.

    Earlier on in February 1979, the Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi of Iran, a long-time American ally was overthrown and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, an anti-American cleric replaced him and subsequently, the entire American Embassy staff was captured and imprisoned within the embassy. This was a terrible embarrassment which the president had to do something about. President Carter was advised by his military and intelligence staff to use force to free the embassy staff. The military air-borne embassy rescue attempt failed miserably with the loss of seven American servicemen on April 24, 1980. This sealed the fate of the president who lost the presidential election to Ronald Reagan, the governor of California who promised strength compared with President Carter’s weakness against American enemies. At the same time, American economy was suffering from rampant inflation affecting the whole world. With his apparent failure abroad and inflation at home, President Carter was defeated in a Reagan Republican landslide in November 1980.

    This was not the end of the Jimmy Carter story. He set up the Carter Centre in Atlanta Georgia and buried himself there turning out tomes of highly regarded books on the environment, peace in the Middle East advocating a two state solution. He was very fair in his assessment of the Israeli/ Palestinian issue unlike what President Biden has done in which he gives the Israelis weapons to annihilate the Palestinians while shedding crocodile tears about the starvation of the Palestinians. President Carter’s centre also went round the world ensuring proper elections and counting of votes so that democracy would have genuine roots in the will of the people. He teamed up with the non-profit organization, the HABITAT, to build thousands of houses for homeless people all over the world. The Jimmy Carter Centre was with other organisations responsible for eradicating Guinea worm disease in Africa and Asia.

    He was also involved in the control and eradication of other bacterial and viral diseases all over the world. He was for 40 years after leaving office, the unofficial face of American diplomacy in Russia, China, North Korea and other places where the official US diplomatic reach was not welcome. He was a man of peace and he won the Nobel Peace prize in 2002. The world has lost a great man and humanity has suffered an irreparable loss.

  • Jimmy Carter: 27 things to know about late former US president

    Jimmy Carter: 27 things to know about late former US president

    Thirty-ninth United States (U.S.) President Jimmy Carter died at the age of 100 on Sunday, December 29.

    Carter won the Nobel Peace Prize for his humanitarian work.

    He died peacefully at his home in Plains, Georgia, surrounded by his family, the human rights organisation he founded said in a statement.

    Here are things to know about late Ex-US president James Carter

    1. Jimmy Carter Jr. was born October 1, 1924, in Plains, Georgia, at the Wise Sanitarium, where his mother worked as a registered nurse.

    2. Carter was the first American president born in a hospital.

    3. He was the eldest child of Bessie Lillian Gordy and James Earl Carter Sr., and a descendant of English immigrant Thomas Carter, who settled in the Colony of Virginia in 1635.

    4. His father was a successful local businessman who ran a general store and was an investor in farmland.

    5. Carter’s father had previously served as a reserve second lieutenant in the U.S. Army Quartermaster Corps during World War I.

    6. His family eventually had three more children: Gloria, Ruth, and Billy.

    7. Carter got along well with his parents even though his mother was often absent during his childhood since she worked long hours, and although his father was staunchly pro-segregation, he allowed Jimmy to befriend the black farmhands’ children.

    8. Carter was an enterprising teenager who was given his own acre of Earl’s farmland, where he grew, packaged, and sold peanuts.

    9. Carter also rented out a section of tenant housing that he had purchased.

    10. Carter attended Plains High School from 1937 to 1941, graduating from the eleventh grade since the school did not have a twelfth grade.

    11. Carter himself was a diligent student with a fondness for reading.

    12. A popular anecdote holds that he was passed over for valedictorian after he and his friends skipped school to venture downtown in a hot rod.

    13. Carter graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1946 and joined the U.S. Navy’s submarine service.

    14. He returned home after his military service and revived his family’s peanut-growing business.

    15. Opposing racial segregation, Carter supported the growing civil rights movement, and became an activist within the Democratic Party.

    16. He served in the Georgia State Senate from 1963 to 1967 and then as Governor of Georgia from 1971 to 1975.

    17. As a dark-horse candidate not well known outside Georgia, Carter won the Democratic nomination and narrowly defeated the incumbent president, Gerald Ford of the Republican Party, in the 1976 presidential election.

    18. Carter pardoned all Vietnam War draft evaders on his second day in office.

    19. He created a national energy policy that included conservation, price control, and new technology.

    20. His administration established the U.S. Department of Energy and the Department of Education.

    21. He was the only president to serve a full term without appointing a justice to the Supreme Court.

    22. The end of his presidency was marked by the Iran hostage crisis, an energy crisis, the Three Mile Island accident, the Nicaraguan Revolution, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

    23. In response to the invasion, Carter escalated the Cold War by ending détente, imposing a grain embargo against the Soviets, enunciating the Carter Doctrine, and leading the multinational boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow.

    24. Carter defeated challenger Ted Kennedy in the 1980 Democratic Party presidential primaries but lost the general election in a landslide to Ronald Reagan, the Republican nominee.

    25. Carter was the longest-living president in US history, having celebrated his 100th birthday on October 1.

    26. His wife of 77 years, Rosalynn Carter, passed away in November 2023.

    27. He had four children.

  • Tinubu pays tribute to former U.S. President, Jimmy Carter

    Tinubu pays tribute to former U.S. President, Jimmy Carter

    President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has joined global leaders in mourning the passing of former U.S. President, Jimmy Carter, who passed away at the age of 100 years.

    In a statement issued on Monday by his Special Adviser on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga, President Tinubu extended his condolences to the government and people of the United States, hailing Carter as a “beacon of service to humanity”, whose legacy transcended his tenure as the 39th President of the United States.

    “President Carter showed us all how to remain relevant and impactful after leaving the esteemed position of President of the United States,” President Tinubu remarked. 

    “He tackled the challenges the developing world faced, from combating diseases to mediating conflicts and promoting democratic values. He exemplified grace, dignity, and a profound respect for humanity”, Tinubu said. 

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    Tinubu underscored Carter’s significant contributions to global health and democracy through The Carter Center, which was instrumental in eradicating Guinea worm disease and river blindness in Nigeria. 

    These efforts, Tinubu noted, have transformed countless lives and serve as a testament to Carter’s commitment to humanity.

    Reflecting on the long-standing ties between Nigeria and the United States, President Tinubu recalled President Carter’s historic visit to Nigeria in March 1978. 

    During his three-day stay at the State House in Marina, Lagos, Carter’s leadership marked a turning point in U.S.-Africa relations, with Nigeria at the center of a strengthened partnership.

    As the world reflects on Carter’s remarkable life, President Tinubu expressed hope that his legacy of peace, decency, and compassion will inspire current and future leaders to embrace the true essence of leadership.

    Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002, Carter dedicated his post-presidency years to championing peace, eradicating diseases, and fostering democracy. 

    His unwavering commitment to these causes has left an indelible mark on the global stage, a legacy celebrated not only in his home country but across continents.

  • Centenary Carter

    Centenary Carter

    •A shock reminder of vanished civility in US politics as we say happy birthday

    On October 1, former US President Jimmy Carter clocked 100 years — a centennial that a grateful world, won over by Carter’s global warmth and love, toasted.

    “I think he has a complicated legacy” Jason Carter, the former president’s grandson admitted, “but it really boils down, to me and I think, for him, that he lived out his faith and the commandment to love your neighbour as yourself in a way that made him respect people.”

    That vibrant live-and-let-live vision, to people of varying races, creeds, faiths and demographics, cemented Carter’s post-power global legacy. It’s a legacy as no other! Though he did only one term (January 1977 – January 1981) — something of a stain in American presidential folklore — he turned that setback into a spectacular feat: the most impactful former American president ever on global affairs.

    Now that claim could sound controversial — outrageous even — when the subject is power and glory, or the US global dominance, or the unfazed penchant of Uncle Sam to play the global super cop, armed with gunboat diplomacy. That’s not the Carter way.

    Rather, it becomes credible when the gauge is near-eliminating Guinea worm — spread by contaminated water, hitherto endemic in the world’s poorest communities in Africa and Asia; Habitat for Humanity (a home-building intervention that President Carter, post-power pushed well into his 90s), and overseeing sane elections all over the world. 

    Here in Nigeria, the Carter Centre was among the first to alert Nigerian voters that the 2003 elections under President Olusegun Obasanjo was a ruse. That was significant, given his amity with Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo as junta Head of State. That resulted in President Carter’s state visit to Nigeria in 1978 — the first by any US President. But for Carter, on the democracy front, duty trumped friendship.

    So, development matters — health, housing, sane elections and social conscience to build a much fairer globe, hinged on basic mutual respect — drove the charities that the Carter Centre drove. The world is grateful, happier and saner for it. 

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    That feat fetched Jimmy Carter the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002. It came 21 years after his presidency and showed the great impact he had made during his post-power years. Indeed, Carter jumped — both feet — into his charities in 1982.

    Why, even Al-Jazeera, the Qatar broadcaster, swooned at how Carter, after his tenure, slammed “almost a universal silence concerning anything that might be critical of current policies of the Israeli government.” On that score, Al-Jazeera is no credible voice, though. Its headless propaganda for Arab/Palestinian causes is as reckless as US dogmatic support for Israel. 

    Yet Carter, trusted enough by 20th century America to be voted president, teaches both sides basic lessons in moderation and mutual respect. That eye for mutual understanding birthed the September 17, 1978 Camp David Accords, the first major peace breakthrough between Israel and its Arab neighbours, which he delivered as US President.

    But beyond being the longest-lived American president in history, and bettering his predecessors in global statesmanship, there is more to the former Georgia peanut farmer that became president, after serving in the US Navy. He’s a fecund writer and author — with works more than any of his brother presidents of any era. He has written or co-written 32 books. Twenty of those are listed as Times best sellers.

    Still, the Carter centennial would gall Americans and their friends abroad, for it marks the sharp contrast between the civil and decorous politics of the Carter era and the rough-and-gruff jungle politics today, as exemplified by Donald Trump.

    Indeed, between Carter and Trump, there are jarring parallels. The one lost power after one term, and moved on to global nobility. The other lost but plumbed into notoriety hitherto unknown, in brazen lies and execrable election denials, with his supporters even raiding the Capitol to turn his loss into a victory. Just as well they failed.

    Again, while Carter’s defeat pushed him to build international peace and goodwill, Trump’s defeat pushes him to run for a non-consecutive second term with unprecedented desperation; fashionable insults and general bad grace.  

    America, the famous settler-country, now howls at, curses and threatens budding immigrants, mainly on racial lines. The latest of that is the notorious claim, by Trump and confederates, that Haitian immigrants eat locals’ cats and dogs in Springfield, a small town in Ohio. It’s been found to be a racist fib.

    It’s 43 years since Carter left the US Presidency in 1981. Yet, it appears US politics, famed for its customary civility, has retarded and retrogressed, more than a hundred years, from basic decorum and common sense. 

    That’s the shock from the Carter centennial. Uncle Sam should claw back the Carter era, recapture those halcyon days, and reclaim his soul as perceived model for global good.