Order of Timor-Leste: In appreciation of friendship and peace-making, By Babafemi A. Badejo

I accept this honour this morning not for myself alone, but for every quiet peace support operation official, every mediator, every civil society worker, every ordinary citizen who does the unglamorous work of holding a country together while nobody is watching or applauding. I accept the Order of Timor-Leste with my wife, Adejumoke, beside me. She has, over decades, survived my travel schedule, and never once complained that a plane once shook so hard over the Atlantic that her husband nearly did not return home.

Your Excellency, Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen

Let me say it plainly before I get sentimental: I accept the Order of Timor-Leste with profound humility. To be honoured by a nation that turned occupation into independence, and grief into government, is not something an Ijebu boy will ever forget.

I first heard of Timor-Leste not in a classroom, but from a friend from Irian Jaya, while I was a broke PhD student at UCLA and doing field research in Pakistan. I want you to sit with that geography for a moment — a Nigerian in Pakistan learning about Timor-Leste from an Indonesian. If that is not proof that the world is one small, gossiping village, I do not know what is. But something about your struggle for freedom lodged itself in me that year, and forty-five years later, here we are, and I am the one being given a medal for it.

Guinea-Bissau, and the Plane that Nearly Ended Both Our Careers

Your Excellency has chosen the International Day of Peace to honour me, and I find that fitting, because our friendship was forged in the rather less peaceful business of making peace. When I served as your Chief of Staff in Guinea-Bissau, your vision was deeper, but we got limited to returning soldiers to their barracks and politicians into office through the ballot box.

Let me tell you about the flight from Banjul to Dakar. A short hop of about twenty minutes. Halfway through, the little plane began to shake so violently that I calmly accepted it was the end. As a devout Catholic, I suspect you made peace with your Maker, though you were far too presidential to show it. We landed only to be told, cheerfully, that a part of the plane had fallen off mid-flight. Not a cushion. Not a tray table. A part of the plane. Your Excellency, if that is not team building, nothing is. You nearly put yourself down, over the Atlantic, with me and a few others.

Our friendship grew into what I call a Big Brother Bossman relationship. You visited Nigeria to see President Goodluck Jonathan, and my wife and I had the joy of hosting you at a small party in Abuja. In March 2022, in the thick of a presidential campaign, you still found time to chair the public presentation of my book at Chrisland University, Abeokuta — which says something about either your generosity or your ability to say ‘yes’ to things while exhausted; I suspect both.

However, it was not all turbulence. I remember we went to Abuja and President Goodluck Jonathan was enamoured by you that he asked us to send away the UN flight, enjoy Abuja and join his flight to Abidjan. It was while enjoying Abuja that you asked me if I wanted to stay on with you in Bissau or move on to Sierra Leone as recommended by your predecessor. I am glad I chose to stay in Bissau.

In Abidjan, you displayed your prowess in speech delivery. ECOWAS Heads of State rose and gave you a standing ovation — no small thing, given how frosty relations between ECOWAS and your mission had been before you arrived. You turned suspicion into applause, which in West African politics was roughly equivalent to turning water into wine.

A Very Dignified Contest of Generosity

Now, Your Excellency, I must put something on the record, gently, in front of witnesses. When Guinea-Bissau needed support for its 2014 elections, tiny Timor-Leste — your Timor-Leste — came forward with $8 million. Nigeria, not a small country by any measure, answered with $7 million. I have thought about this for twelve years. I still do not have an explanation. Perhaps it was your persuasive powers; perhaps Timor-Leste simply refuses to be outdone by anybody. Either way, big brother Nigeria came second, and ECOWAS as an institution came third. I have decided that the most diplomatic thing to do today is not to disclose what the major powers, who had been loudest at the UN, gave.

You never let anyone believe elections alone were peace. You kept reminding the world that Guinea-Bissau’s problems belonged to its politicians and its barracks, never its people. Out of that conviction came the Governance Efficacy Amelioration Programme, your quiet insistence that a nation cannot be rebuilt with ballots alone; it needs the slower, less photogenic work of fixing what is broken underneath.

I thank the people of Timor-Leste, especially the technical team they sent to Guinea-Bissau to support the elections of 2014 in Guinea-Bissau. I very much acknowledge and pay tribute to Nigeria’s role in stabilising Guinea-Bissau under then-President Goodluck Jonathan, ECOWAS lead President on Guinea-Bissau, working through HE Godwin Agama, the Nigerian Ambassador.

Beyond the Office

Our friendship grew into what I call a Big Brother Bossman relationship. You visited Nigeria to see President Goodluck Jonathan, and my wife and I had the joy of hosting you at a small party in Abuja. In March 2022, in the thick of a presidential campaign, you still found time to chair the public presentation of my book at Chrisland University, Abeokuta — which says something about either your generosity or your ability to say ‘yes’ to things while exhausted; I suspect both. And in May 2022, my wife and I stood in Dili to watch you sworn in as president once more, and to celebrate twenty years of your flag flying free. Even as President you found time to attend a symposium in honour of my 70th birthday, where you met and had a wonderful, relaxed interaction with my British secondary school teacher, who later confessed to me that he did not know he was chit-chatting with the President of a nation.

I accept this honour this morning not for myself alone, but for every quiet peace support operation official, every mediator, every civil society worker, every ordinary citizen who does the unglamorous work of holding a country together while nobody is watching or applauding. I accept the Order of Timor-Leste with my wife, Adejumoke, beside me. She has, over decades, survived my travel schedule, and never once complained that a plane once shook so hard over the Atlantic that her husband nearly did not return home. I accept it, too, with our children, grandchildren, and the whole Badejo family, who have watched this cross-continent friendship from the sidelines.

I thank the people of Timor-Leste, especially the technical team they sent to Guinea-Bissau to support the elections of 2014. I very much acknowledge and pay tribute to Nigeria’s role in stabilising Guinea-Bissau under then-President Goodluck Jonathan, ECOWAS lead President on Guinea-Bissau, working through HE Godwin Agama, the Nigerian Ambassador. I also acknowledge President Alassane Ouattara of Côte d’Ivoire, then chairman of ECOWAS, who acted through his Special Adviser, the late HE Mamadi Diagne; the African Union Special Envoy, HE Ovídio Manuel Barbosa Pequeno; and the ECOWAS Special Envoy, Ambassador Ansumana Ceesay.

President Ramos-Horta, I thank you for this extraordinary honour you conferred on me on behalf of Timor-Leste and everyone who has laboured, quietly and without medals, for peace in the world. I am deeply, and rather cheerfully, grateful.

Babafemi A. Badejo was a former Deputy Special Representative of the UN Secretary General for Somalia and a former Professor of Political Science and International Relations at Chrisland University, Abeokuta. He is currently chairman of the national NBA Anti-Corruption Committee and a consultant at Yintab Strategy Consults. He is the recipient of the 2025 Nelson Mandela Distinguished Africanist Award of the African Annual Conference at the University of Texas at Austin. He was decorated with Djibouti’s 27 Juin 1977 Order.