Kofi Annan @ 80: Memories and Reflections

T– Kofi A. Annan he quotation above reflects my worldview. But these are not my words. They belong to someone much older and wiser, and whose mentorship and friendship has taught me many lessons in life. I salute Kofi Annan of Ghana, the seventh Secretary-General of the United Nations and my boss of many years, Nobel Laureate and renowned global elder statesman as he turns 80 on April 8.

On a recent visit to Mr. Annan at his Foundation’s offices in Geneva, Switzerland, I was pleasantly surprised to see him just as spritely, well-kept and un-aged as I had last seen him several years ago. In 2009 I had met him at his office in Geneva to let him know I had decided to resign from my UN system career and was going into the private sector as the founder of a global strategy and risk management consulting firm. As Master of Science degree in Management someone who always had the courage in 1972. He subsequently served in the to launch out in new, versatile directions UN peacekeeping mission that supervised during his 35-year UN career before he the truce between Israel and the Arab became Secretary-General, he was very States in the Middle East, as a senior encouraging of my decision to seek new manager in the UN Joint Staff Pension horizons. Later that year, he telephoned Fund in New York, and as Chief of to congratulate me on my appointment Personnel at the Office of the UN High as Deputy Governor of the Central Bank Commissioner for Refugees in Geneva. of Nigeria. Incidentally, the unplanned In the mid-1980s he became Director of journey to that appointment began at a Personnel at UN Headquarters in New World Economic Forum dinner in Cape York and, in 1990, Annan was appointed Town, South Africa at which Annan, Ngozi Assistant Secretary-General and the United Okonjo-Iweala, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi and Nations Controller with responsibility for I had been among the guest attendees. the budget and fiscal management of the

So, here we were again in Geneva a world body. few months ago as I briefed him on my Kofi Annan’s political career really decision to offer myself to serve my country took off when UN Secretary-General as its President if elected in 2019. He Boutros Boutros-Ghali made him Assistant was clearly pleased with my decision, Secretary-General in the peacekeeping believing as he does that Africa needs department and later promoted him to a new, vibrant generation of leaders. As Under-Secretary-General and head of UN I left him after an hour of rejuvenating peacekeeping. This was historic because one-on-one discussion in which, as usual, he that important part of the UN’s work had shared several wisdoms that left me shaking hitherto been led exclusively by officials my head in awe, we took photographs. of American and British nationality since We shook hands as the camera clicked. the organization was founded in 1945. “Ah, politician”, he intoned to general I had joined the UN Secretariat in 1992 laughter from all present. and, after serving in the UN Transitional

Kofi Atta Annan did not begin his Authority in Cambodia for a year, I was illustrious UN career on the political or appointed a Political Affairs Officer in diplomatic side of the ledger. Rather, the peacekeeping department at the New he was a competent manager of human York headquarters in 1993. and financial resources. After graduating With Mr. Annan now my boss, I observed from Macalester College in Minnesota, him closely. I learnt from him how to USA and post-graduate studies at the manage cultural, ethnic and racial diversity Graduate Institute for International Studies in the global workplace in addition to in Geneva in the early 1960s, Annan my daily political duties. It turned out joined the World Health Organization in also that we were neighbors in Roosevelt Geneva, at the lowest professional entry Island in Manhattan. We frequently took level of “P-1” and later transferred to the the cable car together over the Hudson United Nations Economic Commission River into the city and walked to work for Africa in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. He at the UN most mornings. Unlike most later returned to school as a mid-career African “big men”, Kofi Annan loved to student at the Sloan School of Management walk, disliked driving, and to the best at the renowned Massachusetts Institute of my knowledge did not have a driver. of Technology (MIT), where he obtained a He would tell me stories about his career

THISDAY Newspapers Limited. and advise me on mine as we trekked to the office.

In the mid-1990s Egypt’s Dr. Boutros Boutros-Ghali, the brilliant but pompous Francophile who in 1991 became the first African to be elected Secretary-General of the UN, was engaged in a running battle with the United States government. “BBG”, as he was known, was the master of all he surveyed. For this reason, he clashed often with Dr. Madeleine Albright, the U.S. Ambassador to the UN who later became the American Secretary of State. Albright was not a woman to be scorned without consequence. As Boutros-Ghali’s first five-year tenure drew to a close, Washington blocked his re-election by casting a veto against him in the first ballot for the selection of the SecretaryGeneral in the UN Security Council. Boutros-Ghali “suspended” his candidacy and the rest is history. He later wrote a riveting memoir titled “UNvanquished”. You could interpret that to mean that he had not been defeated, or that the UN itself had been vanquished.

Most pundits and UN staffers did not give Kofi Annan much of a chance of becoming Secretary-General. In their narrow conventional wisdom, they saw him as lacking experience as a “political heavyweight” in the diplomatic world, unlike several African ministers of foreign affairs who had home or regional “constituencies”. On the contrary, it was obvious to me long before the end of Boutros-Ghali’s tenure that Annan would replace him. The reason was simple: quite apart from the convenience of Annan being a black African (in which case no one could successfully accuse BoutrosGhali’s American traducers of racism), his qualifications matched the mood and needs of the time. Management reform was the big issue at the UN in those days and, unlike his competitors from Africa who were all African politicians in the traditional sense of the word, Annan’s technocratic and management credentials redounded to his advantage in the mind of the Western powers that in reality control the UN. I was therefore not surprised when he emerged victorious in the selection process.

Before then, a situation arose in which, despite my deep respect for Annan, I had to make a decisive personal choice. In 1995, as Boutros-Ghali’s tenure wound down to a close and rumors swirled that Annan might be in the running for his job, the Egyptian diplomat appointed Annan as his Special Representative for the Former Yugoslavia, which had become known as “the graveyard of diplomats”. The assignment lasted four months. Soon after Annan’s arrival at his base in Zagreb, Croatia, I received official word that he had directed that I be released from New York to join him there as his Special Assistant. This was the kind of career opportunity any young officer would die for, and colleagues assumed I would jump at the honor. Under “normal temperature and pressure” I certainly would have, but there was an important complication: my wife was heavy with our first child and close to delivery. As a young couple we did not have a house-help in New York. Faced with a choice between strategic career advancement and a critical family obligation, I opted to stay with my spouse in New York and sent word to Annan apologizing but explaining the situation. He was most gracious and indicated that he had not known the intimate details of my family circumstances and that he understood and respected my decision.

Kofi Annan went on to become perhaps the most successful Secretary-General of the UN in its history. Those who hold that position have always been assessed through the prism of whether they were more “secretary” or “general”, but Annan managed to escape this simplistic categorization. Boutros-Ghali was a general. Ban Ki Moon, the South Korean that succeeded Annan a decade later, was seen as a secretary. Annan’s personality and his personal technocratic competence were what made him so successful in running the UN. He led far-reaching management reforms in the UN (I served as a member of the high-level Redesign Panel he appointed to reform the accountability, regulatory and internal dispute resolution framework governing the 60,000-strong global workforce of the UN and its senior management), launched an ultimately successful war against the HIV/AIDS pandemic including the establishment of the social investment fund The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria in Geneva), and launched the Millennium Development Goals.

It was not all smooth sailing. The American invasion of Iraq in 2003 complicated his second term in office. His relationship with Washington soured after Annan boldly described the intervention as “illegal” under international law, and the remainder of his tenure was troubled as the Americans undermined his authority and prestige with orchestrated attacks against him. Out of office as UN scribe Annan, alongside Nelson Mandela, became a leading global statesman and remains so to date. Among his global interventions were his efforts, together with the respected former Commonwealth Secretary-General Chief Emeka Anyaoku of Nigeria, to ensure a peaceful outcome and transfer of power in Nigeria’s 2015 presidential election. He also played a similar role through his intervention in the aftermath of the 2016 presidential election in his native Ghana. Besides Mandela, it’s doubtful that any African has projected the black race into the global mind with as much success as Kofi Annan. That’s called a life of consequence.