Nelson Mandela at Eagle Square

Nelson Mandela arrived at Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport on the eve of 29 May 1999 — fifteen days before the end of his own term as President of South Africa — as the guest of honour at the inauguration of Olusegun Obasanjo. He was accommodated at the Nicon Noga Hilton Hotel and at the inauguration ceremony was seated beside Prince Charles, US First Lady Hillary Clinton, and the outgoing Head of State General Abdulsalami Abubakar. Mandela's keynote address at Eagle Square — fifteen minutes, delivered without notes — drew an explicit historical line between Mandela's own 1962 clandestine visit to a newly independent Nigeria and his return thirty-seven years later to witness the country's own democratic restoration. He praised Nigeria for 'three decades of sacrifice for the cause of African freedom' and warned the new President that 'the test of democracy is not the day of inauguration but the days, the months, the years that follow.' The address is preserved in full in the Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory archive.