Abubakar Hashim/ Freetown
The late US President Jimmy Carter also flew into Liberia for a working lunch with late Liberian President William Tolbert.
He flew from Lagos, after meeting then Head of State, Gen Olusegun Obasanjo.
In Liberia, Carter discussed wide-ranging bilateral issues with his host, Tolbert, amid tumultuous applause by Liberians who were out in the streets to welcome Carter.
This demonstrated the strong historical and diplomatic relations between the two countries, that spanned close to 200 years.
Liberia still transacts in dual currencies, the USD and the local Liberian Liberty Dollar.
The stopover by the late Jimmy Carter at Robert Field International Airport from Murtala Muhammed Airport in Lagos, on a working visit, despite Carter’s tight schedule, before final departure to Washington DC, put paid to the cordial and warm relations between Monrovia and Washington DC.
After late Carter visited Liberia in 1978, no other US President visited the country until February 2008, when Africa’s first female President Madam Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf hosted George W Bush in Monrovia.
Liberia is the only African country the two US Presidents have visited in official duties, signifying a special relationship in all parameters. The other, as the Washington Post put it, was Franklin D. Roosevelt “who landed at Roberts Field in Monrovia, Liberia, en route home from the Cairo Conference in 1943. He stayed only a few hours, however, and did not pay an official visit.”
The US has two embassies, the old and new, domiciled in Monrovia, overlooking the Atlantic Ocean.
Late Tolbert called the late Carter, “ a genuine brother and a reticent administrator”
The US, to date, has a strong foothold in Liberia, with giant US multinationals like Firestone, operating in the Liberian economy
* Hashim, Sierra Leone: Abubakar Hashim is the West Africa Bureau Chief of the News Magazine based in Sierra Leone