Teresematt

37 year old General Murtala saw the letter from US President as an insult: On January 3th, 1976, the American Ambassador to Nigeria, Mr. Donald Easum, brought a letter addressed to Murtala from the United States President, Gerald Ford. . AFRICA HAS COME OF AGE: January 11, 1976. Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. That was the day Nigeria stopped whispering, and started shouting. I was still a young child so back then nothing concerned me as a 4 year old kid. General Murtala Mohammed was only 37 years old. He had been Head of State for less than six months. He took power on July 29, 1975, after General Yakubu Gowon was removed. Murtala was not even supposed to go to Addis Ababa. His deputy, Lieutenant General Olusegun Obasanjo, was supposed to represent Nigeria at the Extraordinary Session of the Organisation of African Unity, the OAU, now the African Union. Then America sent a letter. On January 3, 1976, the American Ambassador to Nigeria, Mr. Donald Easum, brought a letter addressed to Murtala from the United States President, Gerald Ford. Ford was telling African Heads of State what to do about Angola. Let me explain Angola, because without Angola, you will not understand the speech. Angola had just got independence from Portugal in November 1975. Immediately, it fell into war. There were three rival liberation movements fighting for power. One, the MPLA, the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola, led by Dr. Agostinho Neto. It was supported by the Soviet Union and Cuba.

Thread 3: He said another recent development had further heightened the danger of conscious sabotage of our independence by foreign powers. The monetary crisis has highlighted the vulnerability of the economies of the developed countries and the extent to which their prosperity had been built on our poverty. He said the lower the prices we were paid for our natural resources, the higher the prices we had to pay for the manufactures made out of the same natural resources purchased from us. He said the collapse of many supposedly buoyant economies had led to reactions, which even found expression in threats to physically attack some developing countries to force down the price of their raw materials. He said neither Europe nor America can endure a drop in their standard of living. But rather than make the necessary adjustments, it appears some developed countries cast around neo-colonialist eyes and once again long for the recolonisation of that Continent which is still endowed with much of the world’s untapped resources. Then he dropped the line that changed everything. The new weapon is no longer the bible and the flag, but destabilisation and armaments. Mr. Chairman, our organisation should show awareness of the new danger and see the Angolan situation not as an isolated affair but as part of the greater danger. Mr. Chairman, Africa has come of age. It is no longer under the orbit of any extra continental power. Then he continued, and this is the part Nigerians still quote today. It should no longer take orders from any country, however powerful. The fortunes of Africa are in our hands to make or mar. For too long we have been kicked around. For too long have we been treated like adolescents who cannot discern their interests and act accordingly. For too long has it been presumed that the African needs outside experts to tell him who are his friends and who are his enemies. The time has come when we should make it clear that we can decide for ourselves. That we know our own interests and how to protect those interests. That we are capable of resolving African problems without presumptuous lessons in ideological dangers, which more often than not have no relevance for us, nor for the problem at hand. Then he went to the heart of it. Apartheid. He said, Mr. Chairman, when I contemplate the evils of apartheid, my heart bleeds and I am sure the heart of every true blooded African bleeds. He said, rather than join hands with the forces fighting for self-determination and against racism and apartheid, the United States policy makers clearly decided that it was in the best interests of their country to maintain white supremacy and minority regimes in Africa. He accused the United States President of taking upon himself to instruct African heads of state and government, by a circular letter, to insist on the withdrawal of Soviet and Cuban advisers from Angola as a precondition for the withdrawal of South African and other military adventurers. He called that a most intolerable presumption and a flagrant insult on the intelligence of African rulers. He paid special attention to what he called the Pretoria-Lisbon-Salisbury axis, the governments of South Africa, Portugal, and Rhodesia, and to the United States, who he said were interested in maintaining white supremacist minority regimes in Africa. And then he gave the Assembly a clear choice. He said, this Assembly has before it a clear choice. It should endorse the MPLA as the only Government of Angola and invite its President, Dr. Agostinho Neto, to take his place of honour among us. He said the Assembly should call upon the FNLA and UNITA to dissociate themselves from South Africa and lay down their arms, and the OAU should use its good offices, in consultation with the Angolan Government, to effect national reconciliation of all the people of the country.