Laolu Akande, spokesman for Nigerian Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo (SAN), has penned an emotional tribute in honour of the late former US Secretary of State and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Colin Powell.
Powell died on Monday of complications from COVID-19 at age 84.
In a tribute via his Instagram handle, Akande recalled how Powell inspired and encouraged him as a young journalist in 2004 in the White House.
In the tribute titled, ‘In Blessed Memory of Colin Powell’, Akande wrote, “Saddened yesterday afternoon at the news of the passing of Colin L. Powell, former U.S. Secretary of State and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
“When President George H. Bush named him Chairman, he was the youngest ever to attain that height. And then President George Bush also later appointed him Secretary of State several years after his retirement.
“For a black journalist practising in the US then covering, on a stretch, the White House, State Dept and the United Nations, Colin Powell, then Secretary of State was both a target for me for media chats/interviews, and also an awesome inspiration.
“And he obliged me a few times starting in New York in February 2004, after himself and Kofi Annan addressed a UN Donors Conference on Liberia, and then later in Washington DC, where the photo above was taken at an award dinner in his honor in 2005.
“He was not just a profoundly great man, but most respectable man whose life and career remains an exemplar. He once said he wasn’t an outstandingly brilliant student growing up, but yet went on to have an astonishingly stellar career in the military and public service.
“He inspired and encouraged me so much, he certainly won’t be forgotten. May his memory be blessed and may God give his family, friends and associates, the fortitude to bear this loss.”
Powell, the son of Jamaican immigrants, who rose to become the first Black US Secretary of State, the highest America’s diplomatic office, and top military officer, had formerly served three Republican Presidents in senior posts and ascended to leadership of the US military as it was regaining its vigor after the trauma of the war in Vietnam, where he served two tours as an Army officer.
Earlier in Powell’s active days as the US Secretary of State, Laolu Akande, a celebrated and award-winning Nigerian journalist, editor, scholar, had engaged the former top US diplomat at the United Nations, in a session he described as “a lucid evidence of the civility of America’s number one diplomat.”
Akande, who is now a Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Office of the Vice President, turned out to be the first African journalist to interview a sitting US President in the White House, after his exclusive question and answer session with former President George W. Bush.
Apart from Bush and Powell, Akande, who, as a foreign journalist became the longest-serving African correspondent at the United Nations, during his successful journalism career, had also interviewed prominent people in Africa and globally, among whom are US billionaires like Microsoft founder, Bill Gates, and Donald Trump, former US President.
Akande had written for both national and internationally reputable media houses including Philadelphia Inquirer, Newsday, The News Journal of Wilmington Delaware, The Guardian, Nigerian Tribune, amongst others.
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