China will present the world a "perfect" Olympic Games despite some "Tibet independence" separatists and Western forces' previous attempts to thwart the torch relay, Victor Nwaozichi Chibundu, former Nigerian ambassador to China, told Xinhua in a recent interview.
Chibundu, who is also founder and chairman of the Nigeria-China Friendship Association (NICAF), said those disruptions were totally unjustified and that China's development is unstoppable.
Speaking at his NICAF office in Lagos, which is decorated with a large bright red "Chinese Knot" and several Chinese flower-and-bird paintings, Chibundu said he has no doubt about the Chinese government's capability of organizing the most ever successful Olympic Games next month.
The 77-year-old former diplomat who served as minister and ambassador to China since 1981 to 1984 recalled his China experience, saying that even in the early 1980s when China first opened itself up, the mass sports movement was already in full swing. In Beijing, you could see people doing workouts everywhere in stadiums, in school play grounds and in the open areas in residential compounds.
He was also impressed by a few international soccer games hosted by China at that time.
When he learned that Beijing won the bid to host the 2008 Olympic Games, he and his daughter and son, both of whom are graduates of Chinese universities, were thrilled.
He said China's reform and opening-up drive is becoming ever more successful and China is having more and more influence in the world political and economic fields. To host the Olympic Games is a natural outcome of all this for the Chinese capital.
"The world just can not at all ignore a fast developing country like China," he said.
Chibundu went on to say that during his stay in China he came to believe China was going in the right direction and would surely become a political and economic power, which prompted him to dedicate the latter half of his life to promoting the Nigeria-China friendship.
After retiring from the Nigerian Foreign Service in 1990, Chibundu threw himself into efforts to improve ties between Nigeria and China and founded NICAF in 1994, which is a non-governmental organization dedicated to promoting exchanges and cooperation between the two peoples.
In August 2001 shortly after Beijing won the bid to host the Olympics, Chibundu accompanied then Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjoby to visit China and witnessed China's tremendous economic and social development.
He said that seeing with his own eyes China's development in the past decades has strengthened his determination to introduce China's experience of opening-up and reform to the Nigerians.
Since retirement, he has written four books on the development of Nigeria-China ties.
His works, such as Nigeria-China Foreign Relations:1960-1999, are strongly recommended for international relation students in Nigerian universities and have become important reference books for researchers on the Nigeria-China subject.
Earlier this month, the Lagos-based Guardian newspaper, one of Nigeria's most popular newspapers, published an interview with Chibundu, in which he talked about China's development and the upcoming Beijing Olympic Games and explained "Why I opened up China to Nigeria", saying the Nigerians can learn from China's experience to promote its own development.
(Xinhua News Agency July 21, 2008)