President Muhammadu Buhari has mourned the former United States Ambassador to Nigeria, Walter Carrington.
The President in a tribute on Thursday evening described the late diplomat as Nigeria’s ‘Long Time Friend’ who was courageous.
He said the late Carrington “openly supported the people of this country when they fought for the return of democracy following the annulment of the June 12, 1993, presidential elections won by the late Moshood Abiola.”
President Buhari said the story of the Nigerian democracy under the Fourth Republic will not complete without a mention of the heroic roles of the likes of Ambassador Carrington.
“On behalf of my family, the government and people of Nigeria, I commiserate with the family of the deceased, his friends and admirers as well as the government and people of the United States,” the President added.
Biography
The late Walter Carrington was an American diplomat who served as the United States Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to Senegal and Nigeria.
He served as the US Ambassador to Senegal from 1980 to 1981 and was appointed by U.S President Bill Clinton in 1993 as the U.S. Ambassador to Nigeria, where he remained until 1997.
His ties to Nigeria were deep; he had married into a Nigerian family and had lived in three Nigerian cities since the late 1960s.
In 1981, he was named Director of the Department of International Affairs of Howard University. He published several articles on Africa. He served as US Ambassador to Nigeria from 1993 to 1997. On 1 September 2004, Carrington was named the Warburg Professor of International Relations at Simmons College in Boston.
Carrington is a member of the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity. In 1997, he received an honorary doctorate (Doctor of Humane Letters) from Livingstone College, North Carolina.
In 1991, he published Africa in the Minds and Deeds of Black American Leaders (with Edwin Dorn).
In 2010, he published A Duty to Speak: Refusing to Remain Silent in a Time of Tyranny, a compilation of his speeches supporting democracy and human rights in Nigeria during the Abacha military dictatorship.
He has written many Africa-related articles for national magazines.
The late US ambassador to Nigeria died on Tuesday at the age of 90.