Timor-Leste honours Nigerian diplomat Badejo for peace work in Guinea-Bissau
- President José Ramos-Horta of Timor-Leste gave Professor Babafemi Badejo the Medal of the Order of Timor-Leste.
- Badejo was honoured for work helping Guinea-Bissau return to constitutional rule after a military coup.
- He dedicated the award to peace workers and ordinary citizens whose efforts rarely get attention.
Timor-Leste has honoured a Nigerian scholar-diplomat for his part in steadying Guinea-Bissau after its military coup. President José Ramos-Horta conferred the Medal of the Order of Timor-Leste on Professor Babafemi Badejo, founder of Yintab Strategy Consults.
The award points to a side of diplomacy Nigerians rarely hear about: the slow, technical work of rebuilding a country's institutions after a coup, far from cameras and summit speeches.
What Badejo did in Guinea-Bissau
Guinea-Bissau's government was disrupted by a military coup. From January 2013 to June 2014, Badejo served as chief of staff to Ramos-Horta, who was then the UN Secretary-General's Special Representative, with Ban Ki-moon heading the world body at the time.
According to the account of his work, the two men helped repair the broken working relationship between the United Nations and ECOWAS, the West African bloc, and supported a return to constitutional order through elections in 2014. Timor-Leste, a small Asian nation that survived its own conflict, contributed more than US$8 million to that process.
Badejo and a Timorese technical team also designed a governance programme known as GEAP, which the UN Security Council recognised in Resolution 2157. The thinking was that elections alone would not keep the peace unless the government could actually function afterwards.
His record stretches beyond West Africa. He played a founding role in the 2000 Djibouti Initiative for Somalia and worked on the African Union Humanitarian Agency framework.
Why it matters to Nigerians
Nigeria often makes world news for its own security and governance troubles. This award is a reminder that Nigerians also design peace and governance plans in Somalia, Liberia, Darfur and Guinea-Bissau.
It also carries a message for West Africa, where coups have returned in recent years. In his acceptance speech, Badejo gave the credit away, dedicating the medal to "every quiet peace support operation official and mediator, every civil society worker, and every ordinary citizen who does the unglamorous work of holding a country together while nobody is watching or applauding."
He compared presidential summits and UN speeches to the small visible tip of an iceberg, with the bulk of the work hidden beneath the surface.
For ordinary Nigerians, the lesson is about money and stability. Coups and conflict close markets, push up food prices and force people from their homes. The kind of work Badejo describes, from local mediators to election officials, is part of what keeps those disruptions from spreading.
The honour also shows poorer nations helping one another. Timor-Leste put money and experts into a West African crisis rather than waiting for Western powers to step in.
This article is based on reporting by Leadership.
