A Memorial Tribute to Major General Joseph Nanven Garba takes place on Monday, October 28, 2002, 12-1pm in the Dag Hammerskjold Library, United Nations, at which the principal speaker will be Secretary General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan.
During his career in the Nigerian army, from 1962 until his retirement in 1980 as a major general, Joseph Garba commanded various units, up to and including a division. He made his mark on the international scene as Nigeria's foreign minister from 1975 to 1978. It was during his tenure that Southern Africa became the central concern of his country's foreign policy, and he initiated and presided over the World Conference for Action against Apartheid, held in Lagos in 1977.
After three years at Harvard (1980-83), where he was a fellow of the Institute of Politics at the Kennedy School, and which he left having also completed an M.P.A., he became Nigeria's Permanent Representative to the United Nations, a position he held, along with chairing the U.N. Special Committee Against Apartheid, from 1984 to 1989. Elected president of the 44th United Nations General Assembly, he also presided over its Sixteenth, Seventeenth, and Eighteenth Special Sessions during his 1989-90 term in that office.
From 1991 to 1998 he directed a project on regional security issues, first in Southern Africa, and then more broadly in Sub-Saharan Africa, supported by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Ford Foundation. In 1999 he became director-general of Nigeria's National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies, a post he held until his death on June 1st, 2002.
Dr. Jean Herskovits, Research Professor of History, State University of New York (Purchase) and a leading Africanist academic, prepared these remarks for the memorial meeting.
The world knows Joseph Nanven Garba as an accomplished diplomat, and we have heard here some of what he accomplished internationally.
Nigerians also know Joe Garba, as they always called him, as a soldier and a patriot and a man of integrity. Those lucky enough to have known him personally know he was the quintessential public servant; that he could be nothing else. They know that he worked with energy and dedication on every challenge put to him, and he inspired deeply etched loyalty as he did so. They know that every institution he ran was dramatically different, and better, when he moved on from it to his next challenge. And they know the special sense of loss felt at Nigeria's National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies, so energized by his leadership and his vision, now abruptly cut short.
Those who knew him only at a greater distance saw a commanding, sometimes formidable, presence. I remember a young American diplomat catapulting across my threshold in Lagos in the late 1970's after seeing him in person for the first time, and exclaiming in a mixture of awe and elation, "When he walks in, it changes the room." You heard that often.
And there were sides of this many-sided man that not everyone had a chance to see. His love of books and learning did not fit stereotypes many have, often unfairly, of the military. His special commitment at the National Institute had been to build an excellent library. He'd raised money and broken ground for it just a few months ago.
He himself devoured historical works in many times and settings. The Indian subcontinent had taken his imagination from his service there in 1965 with the Nigerian contingent of UN peacekeepers, and he read widely and deeply about it. Incidentally, it was also during this time that, listening to his short wave radio, he became addicted to his two favorite kinds of music: the famous Congolese Franco's OK Jazz and, for something quite different, Handel's oratorios and operas, especially "Solomon," "Judas Maccabaeus" and "Alcina."
His commitment to the South African struggle grew, perhaps, as much out of his fascination with the history of the Zulu expansion and--dare we say--nation-building, as from the challenge of spearheading Nigerian and UN efforts to end apartheid and its injustices. He had a remarkable memory, and would suddenly come out with an unexpected phrase from something he'd read. He'd say, for instance, when wrestling with some problem or other, "Inkomo ibajiwe!"-and then explain to a puzzled listener that it was a Zulu call for assistance, especially in combat, and meant literally, "The cow is stuck," as in mud.
We in this country admire the many-including many of you here-who move back and forth with ease and aplomb between Western culture and their own. He did that in countless settings, but what was striking was that he was always the same Joe Garba, wherever he was: straight-forward, open to all those he met and worked with, even if, in early encounters, he presented a bold, detached front that often masked unsuspected shyness. He did not change. The Joe Garba who worked with American diplomats-his friendship with Cyrus Vance and Thomas Pickering long outlasted professional contacts-was the same Joe Garba who worked with heads of government, including his own.
He was also the same Joe Garba conversing with the chief of the Tarok, up in the hills behind his village home, or joining in pounding millet with a group of women he encountered as he made the climb to greet the elderly chief. On the day of the funeral service at the Catholic church Joe had built in his village, the same chief painstakingly made his way down the hill, and sat quietly on the large rock under the favorite tamarind tree, in Joe Garba's compound, mourning his departure. He was an especially effective extemporaneous speaker, more often than not putting aside the text in front of him. An entertaining raconteur, he used his talents at mimicry to drive home a serious point with a usually humorous tale-which, lacking his skills, I cannot attempt here.
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He had enduring faith in the possibility of solving intractable problems, whether in Nigeria or Africa or beyond. That faith drove his work on regional peacekeeping in Southern and West Africa in the 1990s, as it had his efforts to nurture democracy in Nigeria in the 1970s. Few statements infuriated him more, then or lately, than ones proclaiming that Nigeria was, or is, "ungovernable"-or that Africa's problems, however complex and difficult, were hopeless. In seeking to solve some of the problems of his country, of his continent, of his and our world, many will have reason to mourn his loss, including many who won't even know it.
