Retirement, an opportunity to renew, refresh and restart — Part I
It is exactly a year and 3 days that I returned to Lagos, Nigeria after almost 24 years of working at the United Nations at different peace operations. I had cut my teeth inside Somalia for almost 2 years under the Department of Peacekeeping Operations at a time late General Mohamed Farah Aidid wanted to kill meddlesome peacekeepers as a way to drive them out of his country. We relocated to Nairobi, where I continued my work on Somalia for 11 years before moving to Liberia on post-conflict peace keeping mission.
In Liberia, I put in a little over 4 years and moved on to Guinea-Bissau to support what was conceived as an integrated peace support office for another 4 years. I moved on to Darfur, Sudan spending almost 3 years and reached the then 62 years retirement age.
The almost 24 years of living in hardship situations had its own allure. There was never a dull moment. In Somalia, we went to bed thinking a mortar round could land on our pre-fabricated rooms or we could be kidnapped while moving to and from the airport. The situation was a bit less dramatic but the possibility of being shot at during a carjacking situation or being kidnapped with the UN 4-Wheel vehicle loved by insurgents was there. So, to go for pre-negotiations in town involves support from soldiers in tanks. While in Mogadishu, each time I moved across the green line between north and south of the city, I had 12 AK-47 surround me. Many a time, I was in armoured personnel carriers (APC) to deliver messages. At the beginning, a friend dubbed me “Combat Political”. I had 2 clear close shaves with death and one kidnap attempt in my UN career. I do not know of the numbers that were planned but aborted.
Then there were several negotiations that exposed me to different countries around the world. Many governments hosted peace talks on countries I was involved with during my career. So, I was in Addis Ababa several times with respect to peace talks on Somalia and Sudan as well as Brussels, Luxembourg, Stockholm on the Somali peace process. Peace support on Liberia exposed me to Sierra Leone, Dakar and Brussels. Guinea-Bissau was not of serious attraction to most Governments with the exception of Angola and Portugal that remotely showed interest. East Timor did provide reasonable financial support and some presence coming after Nigeria that put a lot of financial resources into trying to avoid a total breakdown in Guinea-Bissau. Our meetings on Guinea-Bissau was mainly in Bissau except the opportunities to attend briefing meetings at ECOWAS in places like Abuja, Dakar, Abidjan and Yamassoukrou. There were also briefings at the UN in New York and a one-time briefing at the US State Department in Washington DC.
Qatar took the lead on Darfur when I was there. So, we had many meetings seeking to implement the agreement that had been reached with a good number of insurgents who joined the Government.
Then there were training opportunities in Addis Ababa, Cairo, Geneva, New York, New Delhi etc.
In effect, my time with the UN was a very active life. Then it all ended on March 31, 2017.
I happily attended many parties at El-Fasher, Darfur and a dinner in Khartoum, held in my honour by my multi-national friends from Sudan, Fiji, Gambia, Iraq, Bangladesh and of course my compatriots who really did me proud.
I spent a day and night in Addis Ababa on transit introducing my retirement plan as Yintab Strategy Consults to friends I had worked with at the AU and ECA.
I was happy to be returning home as a retiree. In 1981, while I researched for my Ph.D thesis in Pakistan, I had learnt about preparing for retirement. I had learnt from the experience of a friend’s father in Karachi, who was quite wealthy, lived in a big mansion and had two beautiful children, yet felt very restless without having anything to do with his life in retirement.
Though the real reason I studied Law and got called to the Nigerian Bar after a Ph.D. in Political Science was not to prepare for retirement, I saw that such a professional status would help. The idea was to build something I could engage in by using my brains where no-one else can tell me to go home because I am no longer relevant to problem solving in society.
So began the retirement phase of my life, an opportunity to renew, refresh and restart on a good number of exciting contributions. The account of my one year experience follows…….(look out for Part II)!
