By Nura Jibo MRICS
The man, President Barack Hussein Obama, will never cease to amaze me. In 2008, when Obama was campaigning for his presidential bid against John McCain, I was in the Sudan Savanna region of Northern Nigeria, managing a N6 billion redevelopment of the Yankari Animal Game Reserve Holiday Resort and Safari Project in Bauchi State.
At that time, the 2i/c in my office, Dr Aminu Bashir, was scheduled to visit the United States. He asked me if there was anything that I needed him to buy in America. I humbly requested two (2) books: The Audacity of Hope and Dreams from My Father, both written by Barack Obama.
Indeed, it was a joyous moment for me the very day I laid my hands on the two of Obama’s international bestseller books.
For those who are not aware of what qualifies a book to be labelled a bestseller, any book that its publishers sell an average of more than 10,000 copies within a week is automatically considered a bestseller under US standards. Obama’s “Audacity of Hope” immediately qualified for the New York Times bestseller list because of its profundity.
Today marks exactly 18 years since Barack Obama made history in the United States of America. And today, which marks the day of another victory with the launch of the Obama Presidential Centre on Juneteenth 2026, is not only a win for the US Democrats and democracy, but also a day when consistency meets sincerity and the ability to reemerge.
Chicago has been home to Obama, his wife Michelle, and their children, Sasha and Malia.
The lessons I learned from the Obamas are not only about courage and conviction but also about inspiring me to rise and do more with my life.
1. Personally, Obama’s personality (behaviours and appearance), as defined in simple psychology, inspired me to write my first book that debuted in 2010, which I sent to him and his wife, Michelle, one copy each-in 2010, via the US Embassy in Nigeria. At that time, my aim was not really to practice quantity surveying as a meal ticket. My dream was to immerse myself in the study of global literature and novels by renowned authors, such as the Russian Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky and the Chinese Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. I sincerely cared less about studying physics and chemistry books because I believed they offered less to humanity, as they contributed more to inflicting havoc on the scientific world via bombs, drones, and missiles.
I deeply thought that science was never favourable for me. I was quite surprised when I see myself today practicing a segment of it and excelling in quantity surveying at an appreciable speed and awe, because my thinking was to one day appear in a global debate with world leaders such as Barack Obama to discuss the West and Africa and seek an explanation from my Kanoonline super writer friend, Dave McEwan Hill’s candid observation, who averred that: “If we want to keep our best people at home we have to provide a better country for them to operate in. If Nigerian leaders were honest, progressive, and ambitious, they would have rewarded high achievers rather than multibillion-dollar thieves.” McEwan Hill believes that many of our best brains would have stayed at home to build the nation.
However, most of them have gone overseas to be in more satisfying and more remunerative employment in better-run communities.
While I can’t agree with Dave as little as he does, his double-decker challenge was just like the way the Obamas challenged the late McCain and Trump, with his trumpeting of our cosmopolitan world in a George Galloway manner. Indeed, Dave McEwan Hill acknowledged what he described as my impressive contributions that nonetheless read like special pleading to ignite curiosity that the “blacks” are any less intelligent than the “whites. ” To which the question is more complex than that, as he asserted elsewhere that all members of all races function just as well as each other when placed equally in advanced environments. The key question is why some environments get so far ahead of others.
So far, I have repeatedly featured and succeeded in debating the world at the United Nations Conference of the Parties level for umpteenth times.
2. Hence, anytime I listen to Obama, I come away with something new and extraordinary, not in my professional field, but outside my constituency. For example, before the birth of Obama’s Presidential Centre, I established a 3-hectare tree shelterbelt and two high-powered solar boreholes as a community organiser and climate change advocate in Nigeria. In my shelterbelt, biodiversity has already been restored for the people of Asayaya village across a comprehensive 3-hectare area, with a grant of no less than £70,000 from the BCDA.
3. After succeeding in biodiversity restoration, I looked up to the United States of America to leverage the establishment and registration of a segment of my NGO: the African Climate Change Research Centre (ACCREC), which I affiliated with the UNFCCC Secretariat in Bonn, Germany, as its climate observer organisation for well over sixteen years now. Prof. Bello Makama–an African American Chemist of all time, painstakingly registered ACCREC in New York and became its first US Country Director at SUNY-ERIE, courtesy of following the Obama legacy.
4. Now that Obama has launched his Presidential Centre in Chicago, with Presidents George Bush Jr., Biden, and Clinton in attendance, only God knows what is going on in my mind regarding what I will come up with in a couple of months. I will not digress, but I take a huge lesson from the veracity of Obama’s amazing construction, which cost well over $850 million, with Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects and Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates as its landscape architects; the centre is designed to receive an average of 1,666 visitors every week. They will enjoy learning, sports, entertainment and music to the zenith.
5. Indeed, anytime I read and watch the Obamas, rest assured I will come up with something new, especially when I reflect on their times as a husband and wife in perfect harmony.
6. The time they spent in Chicago, with Michelle as an Associate Dean and Obama as a professor of law, often reminds me of the days I traversed and visited nearly fifty countries for my international career. I lived in Europe, North Africa, South America, West Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, sharing ideas and presenting my case studies to the international community, my immediate community and African neighbourhoods.
7. Anyone who wants to know more about what I am up to in a couple of days can watch this space for my open letter to President Obama. This letter is certainly going to be different and very unique from the one I wrote and sent to President Donald John Trump at his house in Mar-a-Lago!