In an interview with CNN on Tuesday, Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga said Boston University offered former Ivory Coast president Laurent Gbagbo a job.
Gbagbo, who was arrested Monday, refused to leave office after an election in the fall of 2010. His departure was followed by a conflict that resulted in hundreds of deaths in the African country.
African officials, including Odinga, have said that a U.S. State Department offer to persuade Gbagbo to go into exile included a job position at BU. University officials said they did not offer Gbagbo a professorship, according to CNN.
BU’s African Presidential Archives and Research Center Director Charles Stith said it is not unlikely the job offering was considered in conversations with the State Department.
“I talk to the State Department on a regular basis and we talk about everything from our residency program…to current trends and developments in Africa,” Stith said in a phone interview. “Our program is for former heads of states that leave office as part of a democratic process, so if Gbagbo had left office in November after the election, then he certainly could have been a candidate for residency at the university. The reality is that given the turn of events, Gbagbo would not be the sort of person that would qualify.”
APARC offers “residential opportunities for democratically elected former African heads of state to write, lecture and engage the university and the broader community on African issues and matters of interest relative to the continent for up to two years,” according to the APARC website.
Odinga told CNN that “[BU] was an option that [Gbagbo] had but he refused to accept.”
“I don’t know but I was given the assurance when I was going to negotiate with Mr. Gbagbo,” Odinga told CNN. “Maybe it was not quite finalized, but I did make that offer to him.”
Stith said many organizations and people around the world tried to help Gbagbo.
“It’s clear that the State Department, the African Union and African leaders…all reached out to Gbagbo to try to encourage him take a peaceful path to transition,” Stith said.
“That kind of coordinated effort was unprecedented and it’s a real tragedy that Gbagbo tried to cling to power.”
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