Idly trawling through the internet on a recent afternoon, you happen upon a black and white video recording on YouTube of the state visit of Nigeria’s first (and only!) Prime Minister to the United States of America. You settle down comfortably on the couch to watch.
On July 25, 1961, on the invitation of John F Kennedy, Alhaji Sir Tafawa Balewa is flying out of Lagos on a state visit to America.
He is visiting a man who has fired the imagination of America and the whole world by his energy and his youthful certainty that there could be a better happier world where everybody, black, white, yellow, would have a stake. He has been in office only six months, and people everywhere are feeling the eddies of optimism he is generating. America is on the road to becoming a better place for all its citizens. The world is going to be a better place for all humanity.
There are facts that do not fit the goody-goody image that hangs around the young American President. Apartheid is rife in South Africa, and there seems to be no end in sight. Portugal is holding its African colonies of Angola and Mozambique in a vice-like neck choke. Much of Africa is still under colonial dominance. Patrice Lumumba – elected Prime Minister of a Democratic Republic of Congo that is trying to free itself from internal strife and slavery from Belgium, has just been murdered, with the suspected instigation and collusion of America.
If there are worries and suspicions, this landmark state visit of the leader of the Giant of Africa is not the place to entertain them. Rather, it is a time to celebrate a brave new world, full of all manner of exciting possibilities.
Arriving Washington, the Nigerians are seen being received by Lyndon Johnson. There is an airport ceremony. The Vice President makes a welcome speech, stating his high hopes for the visit. He speaks of ‘exciting developments taking place in your country and Africa today…’.
There is a motorcade to convey the Prime Minister to Blair House, his accommodation, just across the street from the White house. Crowds of eager Americans line the streets, waving Nigerian and American flags.
Later, Balewa is received on the doorstep of the White House by JFK. The American is looking plump, rosy cheeked and in the full flush of good health. He towers over his Nigerian visitor as they shake hands. His smile is warm.They pose for photos. They like each other straight off.
At the end of their discussions, they express a joint opposition to ‘racial discrimination’ – a pointed dig at apartheid South Africa. They declare a readiness to work together.
The Prime Minister, bounding with energy, is off to the Lincoln Memorial. Lincoln – at this time – is celebrated as ‘the great emancipator’. The March on Washington is yet to take place. Martin Luther King Junior is not yet in the face of everyone, though he is already around in Chicago, mobilizing the black community to peaceful protest. He is yet to make his timeless ‘I have a dream…’ speech. And he is yet to be assassinated.
The Nigerians go from the Lincoln Memorial to the Washington Memorial.
They are received at the Department of State by Dean Rusk and taken through an exhibition of photographs and artefacts from Africa.
A special session of the House of Representatives is convened in honour of the Prime Minister. Good optimistic words fly about in the expansive space of the American Congress. ‘…Free Society…Democratic system of Governance…love of Freedom…’
Congress rises in standing ovation at the conclusion of Tafawa Balewa’s speech.
There is a visit to the Islamic Centre in Washington, revealing intricately realized ornate architecture with a touch of the Ottoman.
There is a reception from the Chief of Mission of African nations.
Then an address to the National Press Club, followed by a question and answer session.
Balewa has requested specially to visit Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
It is a curious choice of destination for sight-seeing, Gettysburg – the place where the most decisive battle of the American Civil War was fought in 1863, and where the ‘rebels’ were routed.
Why would Balewa choose to visit Gettysburg? Is he having premonition of the Civil War in Nigeria, six years down the line? Does he want to know what the scars on the faces and psyche of Abakali and Owerri would look like after two centuries?
In the evening, the Nigerian leader throws a dinner party for his host. You watch as Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey banter with their visitor.
A trip to North West University in Chicago. He is received by Professor Hershkovitz, the head of African Studies, who is reputed to have 20,000 volumes on Africa in his library. ‘African Studies’ is yet to come of age, and the brilliant minds from Ibadan and Ife Universities are yet to take wings and spread across the world to be the African faces of their own story.
He receives the keys to the cities of Chicago and New York.
At the United Nations premises, he is welcomed by the Secretary General, Dag Hammarskjold. They hold talks in an empty auditorium and are clearly impressed by each other.
He meets Adlai Stevenson, the US Ambassador to the UN. They talk.
His parting words are replete with familiar themes
‘…You in the US have a lot to teach about living in peace and harmony…mutual respect and understanding…We shall go back to Nigeria with happy memories…’
Dag Hammarskjold, the smiling, consummate diplomat whom Kennedy once described as ‘the greatest stateman of the age’ would die in a plane crash while on a peace mission in the Congo a few months after shaking hands with Tafawa Balewa.
Two years later after his meeting with Balewa, JFK – the rosy-cheeked young President, would be dead, shot down by an assassin in Dallas.
And a scant five years down the line, Tafawa Balewa himself would be dead, shot down by soldiers on a ‘rescue’ mission that is eitherincompetent or mischievous, or both. As evidence of the bogus nature of the plot, not only would the choice of victims be lopsided, but there would be no evidence of any effort to free from prison in Calabar the social democrat the coupists allegedly want to install as captain of the Nigerian ship.
It is important for Nigerians to reflect back on the hope for a better future frozen in the air almost sixty years past, as their Prime Minister – no saint by any means, and no stranger himself to political skullduggery, goes visiting the handsome young President of America, and to try to reconnect with that hope, as they go to the polls tomorrow to choose their next leader.
Peace and harmony for all the world look to be on the road ahead in July 1961 in the happy story of the two leaders you are watching on YouTube.
But that road to peace and brotherly love would prove to be a road not taken.
History would take another road.
Femi Olugbile
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